WHAT song is in the sap of this brave oak-tree
That to the north-star faces,
Ravened each June by caterpillar masses
...
The day was hotter than words can tell,
So hot the jelly-fish wouldn't jell.
The halibut went all to butter,
...
And what of thee, O Lincoln's Land? What gloom
Is darkening above the Sunset Sea?
Vowed Champion of Liberty, deplume
Thy war-crest, bow thy knee,
...
RED, white, blue, the flag that leads us on,
Stripes as red as blood well shed by many a hero gone.
...
OUR blue sierras shone serene, sublime,
When ghostly shapes came crowding up the air,
Shadowing the landscape with some vast despair;
...
Grim stones whose gray lips keep your secret well,
Our hands that touch you touch an ancient terror,
An ancient woe, colossal citadel
...
COLOSSAL orb of space,
Sparkling with diamond
Of countless star on star,
All whirling with wild grace
...
WE bore them their own wild heather
And ash-boughs jeweled red,
There where they sleep together,
Greatest of Norway's dead.
...
I HEARD him preach in Oxford years ago,
A snowy-haired and tender-faced apostle.
I watched the beech against the window blow,
...
SHRUNKEN little bodies, pallid baby faces,
Eyes of staring terror, innocence defiled,
Tiny bones that strew the sand of silent places,
...