Dirge for a Soldier
by George H. Boker

Close his eyes; his work is done!
What to him is friend or foeman,
Rise of moon, or set of sun,
Hand of man, or kiss of woman?
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he can not know:
Lay him low!

As man may, he fought his fight,
Proved his truth by his endeavor;
Let him sleep in solemn night,
Sleep forever and forever.
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he can not know:
Lay him low!

Fold him in his country’s stars,
Roll the drum and fire the volley!
What to him are all our wars,
What but death bemocking folly?
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he can not know:
Lay him low!

Leave him to God’s watching eye,
Trust him to the hand that made him.
Mortal love weeps idly by:
God alone has power to aid him,
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he can not know:
Lay him low!

by

George H. Boker

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His Truth is marching on.

have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
an read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
His Day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.’

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

by

Julia Ward Howe

For this is war
when a once vacant field has turned blood red
when every man is nearly dead
when the sky above has turned black
For this is war
there is no going back.

For this is war
when men crawl back to there base
when empty tears are pourring down their face
when machine guns have stolen every last breath
For this is war
and war is death.

by

Cassie lee

Huge and alert, irascible yet strong,
We make our fitful way ‘mid right and wrong.
One time we pour out millions to be free,
Then rashly sweep an empire from the sea!
One time we strike the shackles from the slaves,
And then, quiescent, we are ruled by knaves.
Often we rudely break restraining bars,
And confidently reach out toward the stars.

Yet under all there flows a hidden stream
Sprung from the Rock of Freedom, the great dream
Of Washington and Franklin, men of old
Who knew that freedom is not bought with gold.
This is the Land we love, our heritage,
Strange mixture of the gross and fine, yet sage
And full of promise destined to be great. Drink to Our Native Land! God Bless the State!

A Toast to our Native Land

by

Robert Bridges

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measurless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers was girdled round,
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And there were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! That deep romantic chasm that slanted
Down a green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! As holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced,
Amidst whose swift half-intermitted burst,
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the threasher’s flail,
Amd ‘midst this tumult, at once and ever,
It flung up momently the sacred river;
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion,
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ‘midst this tumult Kubla heard from afar,
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves,
Where was heard the mingled measure,
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device;
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw;
It was an Abasynnian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that pleasure-dome.
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard would see them there
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread;
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We know very little of Shams of Tabriz, the elusive Master who wandered the Near East in the 13th Century, seeking ever higher levels of mystical companionship. The legend is that one night he cried out from his longing, “Lord, show me one of Your Beloved Ones!”

A Voice came, “What will you give in exchange?”

“My head.”

“The hidden Truth you search for is Jelaluddin Rumi.”

So it seems an agreement was struck in the invisible world, and in late October of 1244, in Konya, Turkey, they met. Their subsequent Friendship is one of the Mysteries. With them, the categories of Teacher and student, lover and Beloved, Master and disciple, dissolved. They entered into the months-long periods of solitude and deep communion called sobet. But some in the community were disturbed by this Friendship. Several times Shams was forced into exile, though always he returned at Rumi’s request. Then, one night in May of 1247, while they were on retreat, Shams was gently called from outside.

He knew it was to death. “I am called to the torture.”

Rumi waited a long while to answer. “There is only One whose right it is to call. Answer That.”

The Aflaki account, which I am following here, tells then that as the ambushers struck, Shams cried out, There is no Reality but God with such force that the conspirators fell to the ground unconscious. When they came to, there was no trace of Shams except for a few drops of blood.

After Shams’ disappearance, Rumi broke into the spontaneous river of his poetry, more and more of which is gradually being brought over into English. Over a thousand of his odes end with some reference to Shams. In fact, he called the entire collection of his odes and quantrains the Divan Shamsi Tabriz, the Works of Shams of Tabriz. Rumi closes more than five hundred other odes with reference to khamush, the Persian word for Silence. Those two endings are the double-noted theme in this collection.

by:

Coleman Barks