Isabella Valancy Crawford

Here you will find the Poem Songs for the Soldiers of poet Isabella Valancy Crawford

Songs for the Soldiers

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.