Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/Buried Abroad
BURIED ABROAD.
Wide roll the waves between us and our dead
And silence muffles every questing cry,
A world of traffic thwarts each yearning sped,
Empires of sun and shadow sundering lie.
Islanded in a radiance of the past,
Sunk in the deepening flood-tide of the days,
Wrenched from our care, where they were anchored fast,
By the ancient harsh oblivion of the race;
Yet what a cast of faith to leave them there!
There where their very flags are mocked and furled,
There where their very graves mayhap are spurned;
Ay, what a throw against the great despair!
Cast out this ransom with a betraying world—
The centuries will see them both returned.