Monday, May 25, 2009

for Memorial Day



a poem from Herman Melville's Battle Pieces (1866)

On the Men of Maine
killed in the Victory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
___________________________

Afar they fell. It was the zone
Of fig and orange, cane and lime
(A land how all unlike their own,
With the cold pine-grove overgrown),
But still their Country's clime.
And there in youth they died for her -
The Volunteers,
For her went up their dying prayers:
So vast the Nation, yet so strong the tie.
What doubt shall come, then, to deter
The Republic's earnest faith and courage high.



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