General William Booth enters into Heaven, and other poems/The Eagle that is Forgotten
THE EAGLE THAT IS FORGOTTEN
[John P. Altgeld. Born Dec. 30, 1847; died March 12, 1902]
SLEEP softly * * *eagle forgotten * * *
under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay
hast its own.
"We have buried him now," thought your foes,
and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning,
their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you,
foamed at you day after day,
Now you were ended. They praised you,
* * * and laid you away.
The others that mourned you in silence and
terror and truth,
The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy
without youth,
The mocked and the scorned and the wounded
the lame and the poor
That should have remembered forever, * * *
remember no more.
Where are those lovers of yours, on what
name do they call
The lost, that in armies wept over your fu-
neral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high-
valiant ones,
A hundred white eagles have risen the sons of
your sons,
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your
dreaming began
The valor that wore out your soul in the ser-
vice of man.
Sleep softly, * * * eagle forgotten, * * *
under the stone,
Time has its way with you there and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave hearted, O wise man, that
kindled the flame—
To live in mankind is far more than to live in
a name,
To live in mankind, far, far more * * * than
to live in a name.