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To Those Who’ve Fail’d
To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,
To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers—to over-ardent travelers—to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition—I’d rear
laurel-cover’d monument,
High, high above the rest—To all cut off before their time,
Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench’d by an early death.
To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers—to over-ardent travelers—to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition—I’d rear
laurel-cover’d monument,
High, high above the rest—To all cut off before their time,
Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench’d by an early death.
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
A carol closing sixty-nine—a resume—a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north, south, east and west, your
items all;
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north, south, east and west, your
items all;
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.
Annotate
American Poets