 | The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich |  |
I
The long years come and go,And the Past,
The sorrowful, splendid Past,
With its glory and its woe,
Seems never to have been.
The bugle's taunting blast
Has died away by Southern ford and glen:
The mock-bird sings unfrightened in its dell;
The ensanguined stream flows free of stain;
Where once the hissing death-bolt fell,
And all along the artillery's level lines
Leapt flames of hell,
The planter smiles upon the sprouting grain,
And tends his vines.
Seems never to have been?
O sombre days and grand,
How ye crowd back again,
Seeing our heroes' graves are green
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And in the hush of many a lonely glen!
| The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich | |