Nos yeux se sont ouverts dans une aube d’alarmes ;
Les pas de la déroute et les lourds soubresauts
Des fourgons étrangers secouaient nos berceaux,
Les places s’emplissaient de prisonniers sans armes...
Ce fut un été rouge, et puis ce fut l’hiver,
Cet hiver où l’on vit tant de sang sur la neige,
Où toutes, l’une après l’autre, prises au piège,
...
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 the brown pine-needles fall,
The vines run riot by the old stone wall,
By hedge, by...
[At Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C.]
SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves,—
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause,
In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!
...
We do not play on Graves —
Because there isn't Room —
Besides — it isn't even — it slants
And People come —
And put a Flower on it —
And hang their faces so —
We're fearing that their Hearts will drop —
And crush our pretty play —
And so we move as far
As...
