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71
THE FIELD GRAVE.
Scarcely have died on the ear the cannons' last lingering echoes,Boom upon boom in the plain; Fancy still hears them recur.
O'er, but just o'er is the war, and Germany's children, victorious,
Homeward are wending their way, leaving their dead to their fate.
Smouldering still are the fires that War and Rebellion have lighted;
France from her numberless wounds bleeds unassisted and weeps.
Ruin and wreck all around; and I, a stranger unnoticed,
Sit by these nameless mounds, earliest of mourners, and muse;
“Here are three Frenchmen interred, and here two Prussians are lying;”
This is their epitaph brief, telling the simplest of tales;
See, on a small wooden cross the words are inserted in pencil,
Almost effaced by the rain, soon they will quite disappear.
Bitterest epitaph this, that asks for no tribute, and tells not
Unto their mothers the place where they are now to be sought.
Fate, thou art ever ironical! Wherefore this mockery cruel?
Couldst thou not bury apart those who in life had been foes?
Barely a month has elapsed since these men felt the bitterest hatred;
Now they approach and they touch; almost each other they kiss.
Lone are the fields at this hour, and only a white-headed peasant
Stops to look on this grave, common to friend and to foe.
Something the ear cannot catch, he mutters as onwards he passes;
Is it a prayer for the one, or for the other a curse?
72
Ere I depart from the ground, fain would do honour to both.
Both did their duty and fell, and both are now equally nameless;
Chancing to dwell on the path crossed by the Chariot of War.
Mourners at home they may have, and hearts that are sinking with anguish;
Here by the place where they lie, only a stranger can sit,
None that in life they had known. And so, if the stranger should happen
Somewhat a poet to be, let him their Elegy write.
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