Ad Finem Fideles
by Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873�1904) |
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Far out, far out they lie. Like stricken women weeping,
Eternal vigil keeping with slow and silent tread--
Soft-shod as are the fairies, the winds patrol the prairies,
The sentinels of God about the pale and patient dead!
Above them, as they slumber in graves that none may number,
Dawns grow to day, days dim to dusk, and dusks in darkness
pass;
Unheeded springs are born, unheeded summers
brighten,
And winters wait to whiten the wilderness of
grass.
Slow stride appointed years across their
bivouac places,
With stern, devoted faces they lie, as
when they lay,
In long battalions dreaming, till dawn, to
eastward gleaming,
Awoke the clarion greeting of the
bugles to the day.
The still and stealthy speeding of the
pilgrim days unheeding,
At rest upon the roadway that
their feet unfaltering trod,
The faithful unto death
abide, with trust unshaken,
The morn when they shall
waken to the reveille of God.
The faithful unto
death! Their sleeping-places over
The torn and trampled
clover to braver beauty blows;
Of all their grim
campaigning no sight or sound remaining,
The memory of
them mutely to greater glory grows.
Through waning ages
winding, new inspiration finding,
Their creed of
consecration like a silver ribbon runs,
Sole relic of the
strife that woke the world to wonder
With riot and the
thunder of a sundered people's guns.
What matters now
the cause? As little children resting,
No more the battle
breasting to the rumble of the drums,
Enlinked
by duty's tether, the blue and gray together,
They wait
the great hereafter when the last assembly comes.
Where'er the summons found them, whate'er the tie that
bound them,
'Tis this alone the record of the
sleeping army saith:--
They knew no creed but this,
in duty not to falter,
With strength that naught could
alter to be faithful unto death. |
By Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873�1904)
Listed September 25, 2012
Note: This was written just after the end of the war with Spain for
the
freeing of Cuba in 1998. |
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