Park Benjamin
Park Benjamin Poems
I saw the soldiers come today
From battlefield afar;
No conquerors rode before their way
On his triumphal car;
...
Nigh to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade;
His work was done, and he paused to wait
...
Is this a painting? Are those pictured clouds
Which on the sky so movelessly repose?
Has some rare artist fashioned forth the shrouds
Of yonder vessel? Are these imaged shows
Of outline, figure, form, or is there life
...
Time! thou destroyest the relics of the past,
And hidest all the footprints of thy march
On shattered column and on crumbled arch,
By moss and ivy growing green and fast.
...
What though my years are falling like thy leaves,
Oh, Autumn! When the winds are plumed with night
They have thy colors, thy enameled light,
And all the fullness of thy ripened sheaves.
...
Heart, that with warm and generous feeling beat
How strange it seems to one who loved thee well,
That over thee has pealed the solemn knell,
And not one spark of all that genial heat
...
Park Benjamin Biography
Park Benjamin (1849–1922) was an American patent lawyer, physician, and writer. He was born in New York City, graduated at the United States Naval Academy in 1867, resigned from the Navy in 1869, and graduated at the Albany Law School in the following year. He was associate editor of The Scientific American from 1872 to 1878 and subsequently edited Appleton's Cyclopedia of Applied Mechanics and Cyclopædia of Modern Mechanism.)
The Best Poem Of Park Benjamin
Battle-Worn Banners
I saw the soldiers come today
From battlefield afar;
No conquerors rode before their way
On his triumphal car;
But captains, like themselves, on foot
And banners sadly torn,
All grandly eloquent, though mute,
By pride and glory borne.
Those banners soiled with dirt and smoke,
And rent by shot and shell;
That through the serried phalanx broke -
What terrors they could tell!
What tales of sudden pain and death
In every cannon's boom,
When even the bravest held his breath
And waited for his doom.
By hands of steel those flags were waved
Above the carnage dire,
Almost destroyed, yet always saved,
'Mid battle-clouds and fire.
Though down at times, still up they rose
And kissed the breeze again,
Dread tokens to the rebel foes
Of true and loyal men,
And here the true and loyal still
Those famous banners bear;
The bugles wind, the fifes blow shrill,
And clash the cymbals, where
With decimated ranks they come,
And through the crowded street
March to the beating of the drum
With firm though weary feet.
God bless the soldiers! Cry the folk
Whose cheers of welcome swell;
God bless those banners, black with smoke
And torn by shot and shell!
They should be hung on sacred shrines,
Baptized with grateful tears,
And live embalmed in poetry's lines
Through all succeeding years.
No grander trophies could be brought
By patriot sire to son,
Of glorious battles nobly fought,
Brave deeds sublimely done.
And so, today, I chanced with pride
And solemn joy to see
Those remnants from the bloody tide
Of Victory!
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