Henry Jerome Stockard

  • The name thou wearest does thee grievous wrong.
      No mimic thou! That voice is thine alone!
    The poets sing but strains of Shakespeare’s song;
      The birds, but notes of thine imperial own!

  • As some mysterious wanderer of the skies,
    Emerging from the deeps of outer dark,
    Traces for once in human ken the arc
    Of its stupendous curve, then swiftly flies
    Out through some orbit veiled in space, which lies
    Where no imagination may embark,—
    ...

  • Over their graves rang once the bugle’s call,
    The searching shrapnel and the crashing ball;
      The shriek, the shock of battle, and the neigh
      Of horse; the cries of anguish and dismay;
    And the loud cannon’s thunders that appall.

    Now through the years...