[Sidenote: 1917-1918]
O'Leary, from Chicago, and a first-class fightin' man,For his father was from Kerry, where the gentle art began:Sergeant Dennis P. O'Leary, from somewhere on Archie Road,Dodgin' shells and smellin' powder while the battle ebbed andflowed.
And the captain says: "O'Leary, from your fightin' companyPick a dozen fightin' Yankees and come skirmishin' with me;Pick a dozen fightin' devils, and I know it's you who can."And O'Leary, he saluted like a first-class fightin' man.
O'Leary's eye was piercin' and O'Leary's voice was clear:"Dimitri Georgoupoulos!" And Dimitri answered "Here!"Then "Vladimir Slaminsky! Step three paces to the front,For we're wantin' you to join us in a little Heinie hunt!"
"Garibaldi Ravioli!" Garibaldi was to share;And "Ole Axel Kettleson!" and "Thomas Scalp-the-Bear!"Who was Choctaw by inheritance, bred in the blood and bones,But set down in army records by the name of Thomas Jones.
"Van Winkle Schuyler Stuyvesant!" Van Winkle was a budFrom the ancient tree of Stuyvesant and had it in his blood;"Don Miguel de Colombo!" Don Miguel's next of kinWere across the Rio Grande when Don Miguel went in.
"Ulysses Grant O'Sheridan!" Ulysses' sire, you see,Had been at Appomattox near the famous apple-tree;And "Patrick Michael Casey!" Patrick Michael, you can tell,Was a fightin' man by nature with three fightin' names as well.
"Joe Wheeler Lee!" And Joseph had a pair of fightin' eyes;And his granddad was a Johnny, as perhaps you might surmise;Then "Robert Bruce MacPherson!" And the Yankee squad was doneWith "Isaac Abie Cohen!" once a lightweight champion.
Then O'Leary paced 'em forward and, says he: "You Yanks, fall in!"And he marched 'em to the captain. "Let the skirmishin' begin."Says he, "The Yanks are comin', and you beat 'em if you can!"And saluted like a soldier and first-class fightin' man!
[Sidenote: 1917, 1918]
The day you march away—let the sun shine,Let everything be blue and gold and fair,Triumph of trumpets calling through bright air,Flags slanting, flowers flaunting—not a signThat the unbearable is now to bear,The day you march away.
The day you march away—this I have sworn,No matter what comes after, that shall beHid secretly between my soul and meAs women hide the unborn—You shall see brows like banners, lips that frameSmiles, for the pride those lips have in your name.You shall see soldiers in my eyes that day—That day, O soldier, when you march away.
The day you march away—cannot I guess?There will be ranks and ranks, all leading onTo one white face, and then—the white face gone,And nothing left but a gray emptiness—Blurred moving masses, faceless, featureless—The day you march away.
[Sidenote: November 11, 1918]
I could not welcome you, oh! longed-for peace,Unless your coming had been heraldedBy victory. The legions who have bledHad elsewise died in vain for our release.
But now that you come sternly, let me kneelAnd pay my tribute to the myriad dead,Who counted not the blood that they have shedAgainst the goal their valor shall reveal.
Ah! what had been the shame, had all the starsAnd stripes of our brave flag drooped still unfurled,When the fair freedom of the weary worldHung in the balance. Welcome then the scars!
Welcome the sacrifice! With lifted headOur nation greets dear Peace as honor's right;And ye the Brave, the Fallen in the fight,Had ye not perished, then were honor dead!
You cannot march away! However far,Farther and faster still I shall have fledBefore you; and that moment when you land,Voiceless, invisible, close at your handMy heart shall smile, hearing the steady treadOf your faith-keeping feet.
First at the trenches I shall be to greet;There's not a watch I shall not share with you;But more—but most—there where for you the red,Drenched, dreadful, splendid, sacrificial field lifts upInflexible demand,I will be there!
My hands shall hold the cup.My hands beneath your headShall bear you—not the stretcher bearer's—throughAll anguish of the dying and the dead;With all your wounds I shall have ached and bled,Waked, thirsted, starved, been fevered, gasped for breath,Felt the death dew;And you shall live, because my heart has saidTo Death
That Death itself shall have no part in you!
November, 1918
Every one of you won the war—You and you and you—Each one knowing what it was for,And what was his job to do.
Every one of you won the war,Obedient, unwearied, unknown,Dung in the trenches, drift on the shore,Dust to the world's end blown;Every one of you, steady and true,You and you and you—Down in the pit or up in the blue,Whether you crawled or sailed or flew,Whether your closest comrade knewOr you bore the brunt alone—
All of you, all of you, name after name,Jones and Robinson, Smith and Brown,You from the piping prairie town,You from the Fundy fogs that came,
You from the city's roaring blocks,You from the bleak New England rocksWith the shingled roof in the apple boughs,You from the brown adobe house—You from the Rockies, you from the Coast,You from the burning frontier-postAnd you from the Klondyke's frozen flanks,You from the cedar-swamps, you from the pine,You from the cotton and you from the vine,You from the rice and the sugar-brakes,You from the Rivers and you from the Lakes,You from the Creeks and you from the LicksAnd you from the brown bayou—You and you and you—You from the pulpit, you from the mine,You from the factories, you from the banks,Closer and closer, ranks on ranks,Airplanes and cannon, and rifles and tanks,Smith and Robinson, Brown and Jones,Ruddy faces or bleaching bones,After the turmoil and blood and painSwinging home to the folks againOr sleeping alone in the fine French rain—Every one of you won the war.
Every one of you won the war—You and you and you—Pressing and pouring forth, more and more,Toiling and straining from shore to shoreTo reach the flaming edge of the darkWhere man in his millions went up like a spark,You, in your thousands and millions coming,All the sea ploughed with you, all the air humming,All the land loud with you,All our hearts proud with you,All our souls bowed with the awe of your coming!
Where's the Arch high enough,Lads, to receive you,Where's the eye dry enough,Dears, to perceive you,When at last and at last in your glory you come,Tramping home?
Every one of you won the war,You and you and you—You that carry an unscathed head,You that halt with a broken tread,And oh, most of all, you Dead, you Dead!
Lift up the Gates for these that are last,That are last in the great Procession.Let the living pour in, take possession,Flood back to the city, the ranch, the farm,The church and the college and mill,Back to the office, the store, the exchange,Back to the wife with the babe on her arm,Back to the mother that waits on the sill,And the supper that's hot on the range.
And now, when the last of them all are by,Be the Gates lifted up on highTo let those Others in,Those Others, their brothers, that softly tread,That come so thick, yet take no ground,That are so many, yet make no sound,Our Dead, our Dead, our Dead!
O silent and secretly-moving throng,In your fifty thousand strong,Coming at dusk when the wreaths have dropt,And streets are empty, and music stopt,Silently coming to hearts that waitDumb in the door and dumb at the gate,And hear your step and fly to your call—Every one of you won the war,But you, you Dead, most of all!
[Sidenote: January 6, 1919]This was written on the day after Theodore Roosevelt's death.
Somewhere I read, in an old book whose nameIs gone from me, I read that when the daysOf a man are counted, and his business done,There comes up the shore at evening, with the tide,To the place where he sits, a boat—And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he sees,Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar,The faces of his friends long dead; and knowsThey come for him, brought in upon the tide,To take him where men go at set of day.Then rising, with his hands in theirs, he goesBetween them his last steps, that are the firstOf the new life—and with the ebb they pass,Their shaken sail grown small upon the moon.
Often I thought of this, and pictured meHow many a man who lives with throngs about him,Yet straining through the twilight for that boatShall scarce make out one figure in the stern,And that so faint its features shall perplex himWith doubtful memories—and his heart hang back.
But others, rising as they see the sailIncrease upon the sunset, hasten down,Hands out and eyes elated; for they seeHead over head, crowding from bow to stern,Repeopling their long loneliness with smiles,The faces of their friends; and such go forthContent upon the ebb tide, with safe hearts.
But neverTo worker summoned when his day was doneDid mounting tide bring in such freight of friendsAs stole to you up the white wintry shingleThat night while they that watched you thought you slept.Softly they came, and beached the boat, and gatheredIn the still cove under the icy stars,Your last-born, and the dear loves of your heart,And all men that have loved right more than ease,And honor above honors; all who gaveFree-handed of their best for other men,And thought their giving taking: they who knewMan's natural state is effort, up and up—All these were there, so great a companyPerchance you marvelled, wondering what great shipHad brought that throng unnumbered to the coveWhere the boys used to beach their light canoeAfter old happy picnics—
But these, your friends and children, to whose hands,Committed, in the silent night you roseAnd took your last faint steps—These led you down, O great American,Down to the Winter night and the white beach,And there you saw that the huge hull that waitedWas not as are the boats of the other dead,Frail craft for a brief passage; no, for thisWas first of a long line of towering transports,Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one,The ships you launched, the ships you manned, the shipsThat now, returning from their sacred questWith the thrice-sacred burden of their dead,Lay waiting there to take you forth with them,Out with the ebb tide, on some farther quest.
[Sidenote: November 11, 1918]When the fighting ceased there were two million American soldiers in France.
Oh, gallantly they fared forth in khaki and in blue,America's crusading host of warriors bold and true;They battled for the rights of man beside our brave Allies,And now they're coming home to us with glory in their eyes.
Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!Our hearts are turning home again and there we long to be,In our beautiful big country beyond the ocean bars,Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
Our boys have seen the Old World as none have seen before.They know the grisly horror of the German gods of war:The noble faith of Britain and the hero-heart of France,The soul of Belgium's fortitude and Italy's romance.
They bore our country's great word across the rolling sea,"America swears brotherhood with all the just and free."They wrote that word victorious on fields of mortal strife,And many a valiant lad was proud to seal it with his life.
Oh, welcome home in Heaven's peace, dear spirits of the dead!And welcome home ye living sons America hath bred!The lords of war are beaten down, your glorious task is done;You fought to make the whole world free, and the victory is won.
Now it's home again, and home again, our hearts are turning west,Of all the lands beneath the sun America is best.We're going home to our own folks, beyond the ocean bars,Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
[Sidenote: November 10, 1921]This poem was read by the author over the casket of the Unknown Soldier, at the special memorial exercises held in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington.
He is known to the sun-white MajestiesWho stand at the gates of dawn.He is known to the cloud-borne companyWhose souls but late have gone.Like wind-flung stars through lattice barsThey throng to greet their own,With voice of flame they sound his nameWho died to us unknown.
He is hailed by the time-crowned brotherhood,By the Dauntless of Marathon,By Raymond, Godfrey and Lion HeartWhose dreams he carried on.His name they call through the heavenly hallUnheard by earthly ear,He is claimed by the famed in ArcadyWho knew no title here.
Oh faint was the lamp of SiriusAnd dim was the Milky Way.Oh far was the floor of ParadiseFrom the soil where the soldier lay.Oh chill and stark was the crimson darkWhere huddled men lay deep;His comrades all denied his call—Long had they lain in sleep.
Oh strange how the lamp of SiriusDrops low to the dazzled eyes,Oh strange how the steel-red battlefieldsAre floors of Paradise.Oh strange how the ground with never a soundSwings open, tier on tier,And standing there in the shining airAre the friends he cherished here.
They are known to the sun-shod sentinelsWho circle the morning's door,They are led by a cloud-bright companyThrough paths unseen before.Like blossoms blown, their souls have flownPast war and reeking sod,In the book unbound their names are found—They are known in the courts of God!