Poems (Clark)/Pictures of the Past

by Annie Maria Lawrence Clark

PICTURES OF THE PAST

Dedicated to the Daughters of the Revolution.

Rich are the radiant portals,—
 Wide swinging to left, to right,
Where Memory's walls are laden
 With pictures framed in light.

Undimmed by years are the colors,—
 Fadeless the blue and gold,—
Deathless as are the stories
 By brush and pencil told.

We see with the spirit's vision,—
 With quickened sense we hear,
And we live the years long vanished,—
 With each bygone hope and fear.

We feel the nation's pulse-beat,
 All the sudden, quick alarms,
That answer the drum's fierce beating,
 And the fife's shrill call "To arms."

And the plough is left in the furrow,
 While the swift "Good byes" are said,
By lips that to-morrow's sunset
 May find cold among the dead.

We live it o'er in our thinking,
 And our bosoms swell with pride,
For the mothers who watched and waited,—
 And the fathers who dared and died.

And whether where rolled the Potomac,
 Or here by the Nashua's tide,—
Everywhere the wives and the mothers,
 Sat their desolate hearth-stones beside.

How nobly they trusted and waited,
 How bravely they hoped as they prayed;
With hands ever faithful to duty,
 And feet that no danger delayed.

Ever earnestly guarding and holding
 The home-trusts left in their care,
Who shall call them less brave than the soldiers
 Who went forth to do and to dare?

Thus these pictures add story to story,
 And the half can never be told,
Of the noble lives of the mothers
 Who lived in those days of old.

And we, as we number their virtues,
 And the deeds that ennobled their days,
Can honor them best, in the making
 Our own lives worthy of praise.