Sad-hearted, loving, and beloved, and wise,
Who ruled with sinewy hands and dreaming eyes.
What soul that lived then who remembers not
The hour, the landscape, ah! the very spot,—
Hateful for aye,—where news that he was slain
Struck like a hammer on the dazèd brain!
So long ago it was, so long ago,
All, all have past; the terror and the splendor
Have turned like yester-evening's stormy glow
Into a sunset memory strange and tender.
How beautiful it seems, what lordly sights,
What deeds sublime, what wondrous days and nights,
What love of comrades, ay, what quickened breath,
When first we knew that, startled, quailing, still
We too, even we, along the blazing hill,
We, with the best, could face and conquer death!
Glorious all these, but these all less than naught
To the one passion of those days divine,
Love of the land our own hearts' blood had bought—
Our country, our own country, yours and mine,
Then known, then sternly loved, first in our lives.
Ah! loved we not our children, sisters, wives?
But our own country, this was more than they,—
Our wives, our children, this,—our hope, our love
For all most dear, but more—the dawning day
Of freedom for the world, the hope above
All hope for the sad race of man. For where,
In what more lovely world, 'neath skies more fair,
If freedom here should fail, could it find soil and air?
In this one thought, one passion,—whate'er fate
Still may befall,—one moment we were great!
One moment in life's brief, perplexèd hour
