Poems (Spofford)/The Lonely Grave
For works with similar titles, see The Lonely Grave.
THE LONELY GRAVE.
Blood-red the roses blossom in the dell,The bosky place where once the battle fell;Tall have the grasses grown since then, and rankThe ferns, fed with the ghastly dew they drank.Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet these roses of the South;Sweet these rain-lilies blowing after drouth;Sweet the wild grape, whose bunches everywhereFling spice upon the lonesome summer air;Sweet the great orange boughs and jasmine flowersIn dawn and dusk through all the visiting hoursThat troop across the hidden grave's low swellWhere the palmetto stands, a sentinel! A lonely grave,—none care for it, none knowHis name who all these seasons sleeps below.Only the heedless hunter pauses thereTo sight some wing that quivers in the air,Nor feels the presence of an ancient painThat yearns about the unknown spot in vain.Only the noonday sunshine comes, the rain;The golden moons above it wax and wane;The wild deer couch beside it, and the snakeGlitters and slips along beneath the brake;While from the dagger-tree the bubbling songOf mocking-birds makes music all night long.
But far on Northern hills a woman growsThe sadder with each gust the south wind blows;A mother listens, and with eager earsThe step long hushed in every footfall hears;And friends, flower-laden, in a martial routAmong the fortunate graves go in and out.Ah, if to-day one violet fell here,One bluebell dropped its heaven-holding tear,One homely door-stone blossom shed its breath, Less desolate with the despair of death,For all the song, the splendid glow and gleam,This lush-leaved covert of the dead would seem!
Yet, on this sole day of the waiting year,Since love with its dear tribute comes not near,Its shadow steals through the green undergloomTo scatter armfuls of pale myrtle bloom,—A dark shape crooning o'er the lonely grave,The wildly tuned thank-offering of the slave.For here, where strange boughs move and strange wings whir,He rests upon his arms who died for her.Brighter the tide that wet the soil returns,And in the blaze of the pomegranate burns;Loftier the heavens climb from that low grave,Tenderer the air to which his breath he gave.Because he died, her children are her own;Her soul, she cries, to a white soul has grown; Because he sleeps beneath the alien sod,Her race in fuller sunlight answers God.Oh, sweet the bosky dell in sun and shower;Sweet the low wind that creeps from flower to flower!Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet these roses of the South,The breath of the rain-lilies' honeyed mouth;Sweet the bird's song across the lonely grave,But sweeter still the blessings of the slave!