Here stands the great tree still, with broad bent head;
Its wide arms grown aweary, yet outspread
With their old blessing. But wan memory weaves
...
Do you remember, my sweet, absent son,
How in the soft June days forever done
You loved the heavens so warm and clear and high;
...
I
Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
Your song was poured from cannon throats:
...
The sun had set;
The leaves with dew were wet:
Down fell a bloody dusk
On the woods, that second day of May,
...
The sea goes up; the sky comes down.
Oh, can you spy the ancient town,—
The granite hills so green and gray,
That rib the land behind the bay?
...
Sons of the youth and the truth of the nation,
Ye that are met to remember the man
Whose valor gave birth to a people's salvation,
...
Ethereal, faint that music rang,
As, with the bosom of the breeze,
It rose and fell and murmuring sang
Aeolian harmonies!
...
Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
...
How sweetly sang the bobolink,
When thou, my love, wast nigh!
His liquid music from the brink
Of some cloud-fountain seemed to sink,
...
Come not again! I dwell with you
Above the realm of frost and dew,
...