The Call of the Bugles
By Richard Hovey (1864-1900) |
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BUGLES!
And the
Great Nation thrills and leaps to arms!
Prompt,
unconstrained, immediate,
Without misgiving and without
debate,
Too calm, too strong for fury or alarms,
The
people blossoms armies and puts forth
The splendid
summer of its noiseless might;
For the old sap of fight
Mounts up in South and North,
The thrill
That
tingled in our veins at Bunker Hill
And brought to bloom
July of 'Seventy-Six!
Pine and palmetto mix
With the
sequoia of the giant West
Their ready banners, and the
hosts of war
Near and far,
Sudden as dawn,
Innumerable as forests, hear the call
Of the bugles,
The battle-birds!
For not alone the brave, the
fortunate,
Who first of all
Have put their knapsacks
on�
They are the valiant vanguard of the rest!�
Not
they alone, but all our millions wait,
Hand on sword,
For the word
That bids them bid the nations know us
sons of Fate.
Bugles!
And in my heart a cry,
�Like a dim echo far and mournfully
Blown back to answer
them from yesterday!
A soldier's burial!
November
hillsides and the falling leaves
Where the Potomac
broadens to the tide�
The crisp autumnal silence and the
gray
(As of a solemn ritual
Whose congregation
glories as it grieves,
Widowed but still a bride)�
The long hills sloping to the wave,
And the lone bugler
standing by the grave!
Taps!
The lonely call
over the lonely woodlands�
Rising like the soaring of
wings,
Like the flight of an eagle�
Taps!
They
sound forever in my heart.
From farther still,
The
echoes�still the echoes!
The bugles of the dead
Blowing from spectral ranks an answering cry!
The
ghostly roll of immaterial drums,
Beating reveille in
the camps of dream,
As from far meadows comes,
Over
the pathless hill,
The irremeable stream.
I hear the
tread
Of the great armies of the Past go by;
I hear,
Across the wide sea wash of years between,
Concord
and Valley Forge shout back from the unseen,
And
Vicksburg give a cheer.
Our cheer goes back to them,
the valiant dead!
Laurels and roses on their graves
to-day,
Lilies and laurels over them we lay,
And
violets o'er each unforgotten head.
Their honor still
with the returning May
Puts on its springtime in our
memories,
Nor till the last American with them lies
Shall the young year forget to strew their bed.
Peace to
their ashes, sleep and honored rest!
But we�awake!
Ours to remember them with deeds like theirs!
From sea
to sea the insistent bugle blares,
The drums will not be
still for any sake;
And as an eagle rears his crest,
Defiant, from some tall pine of the North,
And spreads
his wings to fly,
The banners of America go forth
Against the clarion sky.
Veteran and volunteer,
They
who were comrades of that shadow host,
And the young
brood whose veins renew the fires
That burned in their
great sires,
Alike we hear
The summons sounding
clear
From coast to coast,�
The cry of the bugles,
The battle-birds!
Bugles!
The imperious
bugles!
Still their call
Soars like an exaltation to
the sky.
They call on men to fall,
To die,�
Remembered or forgotten, but a part
Of the great beating
of the Nation's heart!
A call to sacrifice!
A call
to victory!
Hark, in the Empyrean
The battle-birds!
The bugles! |
By
Richard Hovey (1864-1900)
Listed December 27, 2012 |
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