After The Battle Poem by Jean Mallette

Alas! , the raging battle's done
And morning once again has come
As stillness swathes the bleak horizon o'er
The place where echoes come to strum
Upon the still and silent drum
Heard in the battle just the day before.

Across the scarred and battered fists
Of distant mountains, lies a mist-
A thick, gray cloak of vapor presses still;
Like Death, it rules all Life desist
Where nothing else strives to exist
Upon each brown and lifeless little hill.

It hovers o'er Earth's withered hand-
These thousand miles of scattered sand
That stretch across the desert's fiery face;
It holds the Earth in tired command
Beneath a foul and greedy hand
To smother all of Life within its place.

For there, beneath the fainted gust,
There rests the calm and ageless dust,
Now settled once again into its grave-
Into the place of ancient lusts
Where Time, at last, shall come to rust
The musket and the sword that waxed too brave.

Now Day creeps o'er the battlefield
Where Death unto God's light must yield;
Where silence haunts the morning ever more.
Where Peace and all its pacts, once sealed
And guarded by a mighty shield
Lie fallen 'neath the armour that it bore.

The 'final' fire is out again,
As here the ashes yet remain
Unstirred and cold across the wasted earth-
The soldiers strewn like sterile grain
Throughout the hard and bloody plain,
Each stricken in the hour of his birth;

Each to the name of Pride, a slave,
Now bound in sword and gun to save
Some honored cause he didnot understand;
Each, stranger to the life he gave,
Now sent to some untimely grave
With faith held in his country's hallowed hand.

The scent of smoke and Death's despair
Lies stale upon the morning air;
The bodies all lie still within their pits;
The vines cling lifeless, brown, and bare
Unto the crumbling fortress where
Some unseen spirit moves within its midst.

Far from the fields of Christendom,
There beats the still and silent drum;
Upon the dead now falls the morning sun;
Alas! , the raging battle's done
And morning once again has come
Where nought survives the battle yet unwon.