Our Dead

Our Dead

Nothing is our own, we hold our pleasures

Just a little while 'ere they are fled;

One by one life robs us of our treasures;

Nothing is our own except our dead.

They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping,

Safe forever, all they took away;

Cruel life can never stir that sleeping,

Cruel time can never seize that prey.

Justice plaes; truth faces; stars fall from heaven;

Human are the great whom we revere;

No true crown of honor can be given,

Till the wreath lies on a funeral bier.

How the children leave us! and no traces

Linger of that smiling angel band;

Gone, forever gone; and in their places

Weary men and anxious women stand.

Yet we have some little ones, still ours;

They have kept the baby smile we know,

Which we kissed one day, and hid with flowers,

On their dead, white face, long ago.

When our joy is lost—and life will take it—

Then no memory of the past remains;

Save, with some strange, cruel sting, that makes it—

Bitterness beyond all present pains.

Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow

Still the radiant shadow—long regret;

We shall find in some far bright to-morrow

Joy that he has taken, living yet.

Is love ours, and do we dream we know it,

Bound with all our heart-strings, all our own?

And cold and cruel dawn may show it,

Scattered, desecrated, overthrown.

Only the dead hearts forsake us never;

Love, that to death's loyal cure has fled,

Is thus consecrated ours forever,

And no change can rob us of our dead.

So when fate comes to besiege our city,

Dim our gold, or make our flowers fall,

Death, the angel, comes in love and pity,

And to save our treasures, claims them all.

Unattributed

1:40, p. 1

4.21.1860