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
...