OH! if there is in beautiful and fair
A potency to
charm, a power to bless;
If bright blue skies and
music-breathing air,
And Nature in her every varied dress
Of peaceful beauty and wild loveliness,
Can shed across
the heart one sunshine ray,
Then others, too, sweet
stream, with only less
Than mine own joy, shall gaze, and
bear away
Some cherished thought of thee for many a
coming day.
But yet not utterly obscure thy banks,
Nor all unknown to history's page thy name;
For there
wild war hath poured his battle ranks,
And stamped, in
characters of blood and flame,
Thine annals in the
chronicles of fame.
The wave that ripples on, so calm and
still,
Hath trembled at the war-cry's loud acclaim,
The cannon's voice hath rolled from hill to hill,
And
midst thy echoing vales the trump hath sounded shrill.
My country's standard waved on yonder height,
Her red
cross banner England there displayed,
And there the
German, who, for foreign fight,
Had left his own domestic
hearth, and made
War, with its horrors and its blood, a
trade,
Amidst the battle stood; and all the day,
The
bursting bomb, the furious cannonade,
The bugle's martial
notes, the musket's play,
In mingled uproar wild,
resounded far away.
Thick clouds of smoke obscured
the clear bright sky,
And hung above them like a funeral
pall,
Shrouding both friend and foe, so soon to lie
Like brethren slumbering in one father's hall:
The work
of death went on, and when the fall
Of night came onward
silently, and shed
A dreary hush, where late was uproar
all,
How many a brother's heart in anguish bled
O'er
cherished ones, who there lay resting with the dead.
Unshrouded and uncoffined they were laid
Within the
soldier's grave�e'en where they fell:
At noon they
proudly trod the field,�the spade
At night dug out their
resting-place; and well
And calmly did they slumber,
though no bell
Pealed over them its solemn music slow:
The night winds sung their only dirge,�their knell
Was
but the owlet's boding cry of woe,
The flap of
night-hawk's wing, and murmuring waters' flow.
But it
is over now,�the plough hath rased
All trace of where
War's wasting hand hath been:
No vestige of the battle
may be traced,
Save where the share, in passing o'er the
scene,
Turns up some rusted ball; the maize is green
On what was once the death-bed of the brave;
The waters
have resumed their wonted sheen,
The wild bird sings in
cadence with the wave,
And naught remains to show the
sleeping soldier's grave.
A pebble-stone that on the
war-field lay,
And a wild rose that blossomed brightly
there,
Were all the relics that I bore away,
To tell
that I had trod the scene of war,
When I had turned my
footsteps homeward far.
These may seem childish things to
some; to me
They shall be treasured ones,�and, like the
star
That guides the sailor o'er the pathless sea,
They shall lead back my thoughts, loved Brandywine, to thee! |
