Poems (Odom)/The Better Part
THE BETTER PART.
We hold the fame of our Southern dead As a precious, sacred trust;And we step with a slower, lighter tread, When we pass their sleeping dust.
Their blood-stained memories enfold Our mourning hearts to-day;And we pile the marble high and cold Above their pulseless clay.
A hundred golden records shine, To tell the dead men's fame;While laurel leaflets closely twine Around each sculptured name.
Our patriotic tear-drops fall Upon their names we carve—The sire sleeps in his marble hall The while his children starve.
His little ones may cry for bread, His hapless widow freeze—Our sympathies are with the dead, But not with such as these.
We pass them in the busy street, Nor heed their pleading moans;Their hearts may bleed beneath our feet— We honor dead men's bones.
We give our tears, we heap our gold, Above their crumbling dust;Forgetting that we still may hold A higher, purer trust.
Forgetting that a loaf of bread Fed to a soldier's child,Is worth more to those heroes dead Than all the stones we have piled.