Clinton Scollard

St. Paul’s Churchyard

PICARDY, Provençe, Touraine—

Never the fair home land again,

For the Sieur de Rochefontaine!

Never to lie among his own

With the soft south breezes o’er him blown

Where his stately noble name is known!

But ever and evermore to rest,

With the alien marble above his breast,

In the clime of his youthful soldier quest.

In the tyrannous time of war and woe,

The ancient foe of his folk our foe,

Hither he came with Rochambeau.

Lace and ruffle and epaulet,

Grace and a courtier bearing, yet

A soul as valiant as Lafayette.

A valiant soul that burned to be

In the fore of the fight for liberty

With the dauntless men who would fain be free.

Just another who caught the gleam

Of the sun of Freedom’s rising beam,

Who saw the vision, who dreamed the dream.

Daily Broadway’s clamours and calls

Sweep by the chapel of old St. Paul’s,

Its levelled graves and its ivied walls.

Here he sleeps; may his slumbers be

Sweet with the great felicity

That waits, ’tis said, beyond Death’s dark sea.

Never the fair home land!—and still

What matters it for a noble will

That smites for right, ’gainst a giant ill?

Ours the freedom he helped to gain;

So a plot of our free domaine

For the Sieur de Rochefontaine.