Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Lexington
By John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)N
No battle-joy was theirs, who set
Against the alien bayonet
Their homespun breasts in that old day.
They loved not strife, they dreaded pain;
They saw not, what to us is plain,
That God would make man’s wrath his praise.
Its vast results the future hid:
The meaning of the work they did
Was strange and dark and doubtful then.
The plough mid-furrow standing still,
The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.
They scarcely asked the reason why;
They only knew they could but die,
And death was not the worst of all!
All that was theirs to give they gave.
The flowers that blossomed from their grave
Have sown themselves beneath all skies.
And shattered slavery’s chain as well;
On the sky’s dome, as on a bell,
Its echo struck the world’s great hour.
The nations listening to its sound
Wait, from a century’s vantage-ground,
The holier triumphs yet to come,—
The gladness of the world’s release,
When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace
The hawk shall nestle with the dove!—
Unknown to other rivalries
Than of the mild humanities,
And gracious interchange of good,
Till meet, beneath saluting flags,
The eagle of our mountain-crags,
The lion of our Motherland!