Above the Battle
Honor and pity for the smitten field,
The valorous ranks mown down like precious corn,
Whose want must famish love morn after morn,
Till Death, the good physician, shall have healed
The craving and the tearspent eyelids sealed.
Proud be the homes that for each cannon-torn,
Encrimsoned rampart have been left forlorn;
Holy the knells o'er fallen patriots pealed.
But they, above the battle, throng a space
Of starry silences and silver rest.
Commingled ghosts, they press like brothers through
White, dove-winged portals, where one Father's face
Atones their passion, as the ethereal blue
Serenes the fiery glows of east and west.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Babushka
THOU whose sunny heart outglows
Arctic snows;
Russia's hearth-fire, cherishing
Courage almost perishing;
Torch that beacons oversea
Till a world is at thy knee;
Babushka the Belovèd,
What Czar can exile thee?
Sweet, serene, unswerving soul,
To thy goal
Pressing on such mighty pinions
Tyrants quake for their dominions
And devise yet heavier key,
Deeper cell to prison thee,
Babushka the Belovèd,
Thyself art Liberty.
Though thy martyr body, old,
Chains may hold,
Clearer still thy voice goes ringing
Over steppe and mountain, bringing,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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New Year
WHITE year, white year,
Muffled soft in snow,
A diamond spray whose gems are gone
Before their grace we know,
A crystal-coated spray whose hours
Melt when looked upon,
Hoarfrost stars and hoarfrost flowers,
White year!
Green year, green year,
Sweet with sun and showers,
A windblown spray whose blossoms bright
Are the seven-colored hours,
A dancing spray whose leaves are days,
A spray whose leaves delight
In azure gleam and silver haze,
Green year!
New Year, new year
From rosy leaf to gold,
A shining spray on the Tree of Time
Where myriad sprays unfold,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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His Bit
GALLANTLY swung the old carpenter up to his door,
Drums and fifes in his tread,
But softly he crossed the braided mats on the floor,
Gently he stroked her head.
'More folks were there at the station than ever I knew,
Bidding the lad good-by.
Here's a daisy he picked at the platform's edge for you,
Kissing it on the sly.
'He'll do his part, our boy, on the fighting line';
— She caught the flower to her lips—
'And you with your knitting, and I have signed up for mine,
Work on the wooden ships.
'Oh, but it's hard to be old when the bugles call,
Yet I hav'n't lost my chance.
I'll be in the shipyard the day the first trees fall,
Before the boy's in France.'
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Our First War-Christmas
HARD to wait for the postman's tramp
Up the snowy walk, for the hand that gropes
Deep in his pack, while the children tease
For the rainbow-ribboned packages,
And women wax faint with their fearful hopes
For those tattered, grimy envelopes
With the foreign stamp,
— Word, dear word from overseas,
From the fleet, the trench, the camp.
Oh, not jewels nor curious toys
Of art and fashion, no gift most rare
Can gladden those eyes that weep in the hush
Of lonely nights, can bring the flush
To faces white with their silent prayer,
Like the letters, precious beyond compare,
From our soldier-boys,
Letters to laugh over, cry over, crush
To the lips, our Christmas joys.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Eavesdropping
THOUGH the winds but stir on their hoary thrones
Of hemlock and pungent pine,
All the whispering woodland tones
Gossip of things divine, —
Why God is gray in the granite rock,
And green in the lichen flake,
And swift in the darting swallow-flock,
And slow in the lapping lake;
Why God is sweet in the hermit-thrush,
And hoarse in the frog; and why
His touch on the bee is golden plush,
And gauze on the stinging fly;
Why God is life in the mushroom there,
And death in the toadstool here;
Mirth in the dancing maidenhair;
In its hidden adder, fear.
Oh, if this berry that stains my lip
Could teach me the woodland chat,
Science would bow to my scholarship,
And Theology doff the hat.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The Perfect Day
GOD made a day of blue and gold,
Sweet as a violet,
As merry as a marigold;
It may be shining yet
In some blest vale, some dreamy dell
Among the heavenly hills,
Where here and there the asphodel
Is flecked by daffodils
And gentians, flowers that twinkled on
The fields our childhood knew,
Too lovely for oblivion,
Fed with immortal dew.
That summer day, all murmurous
With laughters of old mirth,
How tenderly 'twould comfort us,
Still homesick for the earth;
With what dear touch 'twould fold us in,
As to a mother's knee,
From those strange spaces crystalline
Of vast eternity,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The Lighthouse
IN seas far north, day after day
We leaned upon the rail, engrossed
In frolic fin and jewel spray
And crystal headlands of the coast.
Those beauties held so long in gaze
Have melted from my mind like snow,
But still I see through rifted haze
The wizard tower and portico
That flashed one instant, white and whist,
A grace too exquisite to keep,
A picture springing from the mist
As a dream comes shining out of sleep.
I do not know what name he wrote,
Our captain, in his good ship's log,
For that sea-wraith, —how men denote
Our fleeting phantom of the fog;
But yet across the world I thrill
With rapture of that ivory gleam,
That sudden shaft of glory, till
It wears the wonder of a dream.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The U-Boat Crew
ALAS, alas for those blond boys who stalk
Their prey in ambush of the shuddering seas,
Whiling the wait with merry, tender talk
Of some dear knot of flower-clad cottages
Beyond the Rhine! The merchantship draws on;
Their swift torpedo strikes its mark; the sea
Moans with the dying; for a victory won
They thank the pagan god of Germany.
Happier to die the hideous, smothering death,
Too deep for mercy, in their own snared trap,
Than live to learn how time interpreteth
The cause they served; the tragical mishap
Of pride that pledged The Day and brought The Night;
—Than live to loathe their Fatherland, a name
So high, so fallen, that betrayed their bright
Young loyalty to savageries of shame.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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At Stonehenge
Grim stones whose gray lips keep your secret well,
Our hands that touch you touch an ancient terror,
An ancient woe, colossal citadel
Of some fierce faith, some heaven-affronting error.
Rude-built, as if young Titans on this wold
Once played with ponderous blocks a striding giant
Had brought from oversea, till child more bold
Tumbled their temple down with foot defiant.
Upon your fatal altar Redbreast combs
A fluttering plume, and flocks of eager swallows
Dip fearlessly to choose their April homes
Amid your crevices and storm-beat hollows.
Even so in elemental mysteries,
Portentous, vast, august, uncomprehended,
Do we dispose our little lives for ease,
By their unconscious courtesies befriended.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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