Here you will find the Poem Songs for the Soldiers of poet Isabella Valancy Crawford
IF songs be sung let minstrels strike their harps To large and joyous strains, all thunder-winged To beat along vast shores. Ay, let their notes Wild into eagles soaring toward the sun, And voiced like bugles bursting through the dawn When armies leap to life! Give them such breasts As hold immortal fires, and they shall fly, Swept with our little sphere through all the change That waits a whirling world. Joy's an immortal; She hath a fiery fibre in her flesh That will not droop or die; so let her chant The pæans of the dead, where holy Grief Hath, trembling, thrust the feeble mist aside That veils her dead, and in the wondrous clasp Of re-possession ceases to be Grief. Joy's ample voice shall still roll over all, And chronicle the heroes to young hearts Who knew them not..... There's glory on the sword That keeps its scabbard-sleep, unless the foe Beat at the wall, then freely leaps to light And thrusts to keep the sacred towers of Home And the dear lines that map the nation out upon the world.