Notes From the Victory
Ah me, who is ringing those bells?
Right merry for funeral knells!
If the winds of hell could ring them as well,
What woe would the demons lack?
My light blew out in the gust of the rout:
My boy will never come back.
And drums!—How lightly they roll!
Coarse drums, can they call the soul?
Folks, out of breath, do you shout at death?
Can you rend the tomb?—Alack,
Vain echoes around, pale under the ground,
My boy will never come back.
Guns too! O why do they roar?
Alas, I thought it was o’er.
Though why care I, though a million die,
And all of us wear but black?
I, too, with the proud have my blood-stain’d shroud:
My boy will never come back.
Our land!—Who wants it to last!
Its future is doom’d by the past.
And the tears that rise to its mourners’ eyes
Will ever dim all they track.
Chill, shivering breast, freeze, freeze into rest:
My boy will never come back.