 | The poems of Robert Traill Spence Lowell |  |
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THE FAILURE AT FREDERICKSBURG,
UNDER THAT TRUE MAN AND SOLDIER, MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE.
Was nothing gained? Is this not gain, so high
A mark for us and after-comers set?
Life is at strongest that can greatly die,
And manhood better worth than all men get.
A mark for us and after-comers set?
Life is at strongest that can greatly die,
And manhood better worth than all men get.
Is this not gain, that our slow, flabby heart,
Dull-laboring, long, in sordid work and trade,
With quick, strong, throb thrown back to it should start,
And learn that beat wherewith great deeds are made?
Dull-laboring, long, in sordid work and trade,
With quick, strong, throb thrown back to it should start,
And learn that beat wherewith great deeds are made?
At need best blood may better far be shed
Than frame fair thought, or drive the wheel and plough:
No fathers yet for country nobly bled,
Whose sons are not the nobler livers now.
Than frame fair thought, or drive the wheel and plough:
No fathers yet for country nobly bled,
Whose sons are not the nobler livers now.
To push the bridge up to the flaming guns,
To throng the rocking skiffs, in death's broad sight,
To wade the trench where their own life-blood runs,—
This was to conquer, if they lost they fight.
To throng the rocking skiffs, in death's broad sight,
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This was to conquer, if they lost they fight.
They fail not, that their face still forward keep,
And lift their stout hearts up from every fall:
They fail that in mid-stream dread greater deep;
They fail, that, losing little, fear for all.
And lift their stout hearts up from every fall:
They fail that in mid-stream dread greater deep;
They fail, that, losing little, fear for all.
Here in far home, by safe ties tamely held,
We shame to write of these things brave and high,
Though our own blood from its next veins has welled,
And meekly we dare hope that we could die.
We shame to write of these things brave and high,
Though our own blood from its next veins has welled,
And meekly we dare hope that we could die.
But shall your great deeds want their written fame;
Our coward voices give you back no cheer?
To sit aghast or dumb were greater shame
Than thus to warm to manhood, even here.
Our coward voices give you back no cheer?
To sit aghast or dumb were greater shame
Than thus to warm to manhood, even here.
January 8, 1863.
| The poems of Robert Traill Spence Lowell | |