The Great Twin Brethren

The battle will not cease
Till once again on those white steeds ye ride,
O heaven-descended Twins,
Before humanity's bewildered host.
Our javelins
Fly wide,
And idle is our cannon's boast.
Lead us, triumphant Brethren, Love and Peace.
A fairer Golden Fleece
Our more adventurous Argo fain would seek,
But save, O Sons of Jove,
Your blended light go with us, vain employ
It were to rove
This bleak,
Blind waste. To unimagined joy
Guide us, immortal Brethren, Love and Peace.

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates was an American writer, poet, and professor, best known for her poem 'America the Beautiful,' the lyrics of which have become one of the most iconic American patriotic songs. She was also influential in American literature as a professor at Wellesley College, where she mentored many female writers. A prolific poet and author, Bates wrote a variety of works including travel books, children's books, and literary criticism.

Katharine Lee Bates

Above The Battle

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

If You Could Come

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

Matthew Arnold On hearing him read his Poems in Boston

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Above The Battle

Honor and pity for the smitten field,
The valorous ranks mown down like precious corn,
Whose want must famish love morn after morn,
Till Death, the good physician, shall have healed
The craving and the tearspent eyelids sealed.
Proud be the homes that for each cannon-torn,
Encrimsoned rampart have been left forlorn;
Holy the knells o'er fallen patriots pealed.

But they, above the battle, throng a space
Of starry silences and silver rest.
Commingled ghosts, they press like brothers through
White, dove-winged portals, where one Father's face
Atones their passion, as the ethereal blue
Serenes the fiery glows of east and west.

Katharine Lee Bates

The Two Armies

As Life's unending column pours,
Two marshalled hosts are seen, -
Two armies on the trampled shores
That Death flows black between.

One marches to the drum-beat's roll,
The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,
And bears upon a crimson scroll,
"Our glory is to slay."

One moves in silence by the stream,
With sad, yet watchful eyes,
Calm as the patient planet's gleam
That walks the clouded skies.

Along its front no sabres shine,
No blood-red pennons wave;
Its banner bears the single line,
"Our duty is to save."

For those no death-bed's lingering shade;
At Honor's trumpet-call,
With knitted brow and lifted blade
In Glory's arms they fall.

For these no clashing falchions bright,
No stirring battle-cry;
The bloodle...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

For The Commemoration Services

Four summers coined their golden light in leaves,
Four wasteful autumns flung them to the gale,
Four winters wore the shroud the tempest weaves,
The fourth wan April weeps o'er hill and vale;

And still the war-clouds scowl on sea and land,
With the red gleams of battle staining through,
When lo! as parted by an angel's hand,
They open, and the heavens again are blue!

Which is the dream, the present or the past?
The night of anguish or the joyous morn?
The long, long years with horrors overcast,
Or the sweet promise of the day new-born?

Tell us, O father, as thine arms infold
Thy belted first-born in their fast embrace,
Murmuring the prayer the patriarch breathed of old, -
"Now let me die, for I have seen thy face!"

Tell us, O mother, - ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hymn Of The Triumphant Airman

Oh, long had we paltered
With bridle and girth
Ere those horses were haltered
That gave us the Earth,

Ere the Flame and the Fountain,
The Spark and the Wheel,
Sank Ocean and Mountain
Alike neath our keel.

But the Wind in her blowing,
The bird on the wind,
Made naught of our going,
And left us behind.

Till the gale was outdriven,
The gull overflown,
And there matched us in Heaven
The Sun-God alone.

He only the master
We leagued to oerthrow,
He only the faster
And, therefore, our foe!
.    .    .    .    .
Light steals to uncurtain
The dim-shaping skies
That arch and make certain
Where he shall arise.

We lift to the onset.
We challenge anew.
From sunrise to sunset,
Apollo...

Rudyard

Battle Days

I

Veteran memories rally to muster
Here at the call of the old battle days:
Cavalry clatter and cannon's hoarse bluster:
All the wild whirl of the fight's broken maze:
Clangor of bugle and flashing of sabre,
Smoke-stifled flags and the howl of the shell,
With earth for a rest place and death for a neighbor,
And dreams of a charge and the deep rebel yell.
Stern was our task in the field where the reaping
Spared the ripe harvest, but laid our men low:
Grim was the sorrow that held us from weeping:
Awful the rush of the strife's ebb and flow.
Swift came the silence - our enemy hiding
Sudden retreat in the cloud-muffled night:
Swift as a hawk-pounce our hill-and-dale riding;
Hundreds on hundreds we caught in their flight!
Hard and incessant the danger a...

George Parsons Lathrop

The Air

Oh, cast every care to the wind,
And dry, best beloved, the tear!
Secure, that thou ever shalt find,
The friend of thy bosom sincere.
Still friendship shall live in the breast of the brave,
And we'll love, the long day, where the forest-trees wave.

I have felt each emotion of bliss,
That affection the fondest can prove,
Have received on my lip the first kiss
Of thy holy and innocent love;
But perish each hope of delight,
Like the flashes of night on the sea,
If ever, though far from thy sight,
My soul is forgetful of thee!
Still the memory shall live in the breast of the brave,
How we loved, the long day, where the forest-trees wave.

Now bring my boy; may God above
Shower blessings on his head!
May he requite his mother's love,
And t...

William Lisle Bowles