To E.S. Salomon poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry

What! Salomon! such words from you,

Who call yourself a soldier? Well,

The Southern brother where he fell

Slept all your base oration through.

Alike to him – he cannot know

Your praise or blame: as little harm

Your tongue can do him as your arm

A quarter-century ago.

The brave respect the brave. The brave

Respect the dead; but you – you draw

That ancient blade, the ass’s jaw,

And shake it o’er a hero’s grave.

Are you not he who makes to-day

A merchandise of old reknown

Which he persuades this easy town

He won in battle far away?

Nay, those the fallen who revile

Have ne’er before the living stood

And stoutly made their battle good

And greeted danger with a smile.

What if the dead whom still you hate

Were wrong? Are you so surely right?

We know the issues of the fight –

The sword is but an advocate.

Men live and die, and other men

Arise with knowledges diverse:

What seemed a blessing seems a curse,

And Now is still at odds with Then.

The years go on, the old comes back

To mock the new – beneath the sun

Is nothing new; ideas run

Recurrent in an endless track.

What most we censure, men as wise

Have reverently practiced; nor

Will future wisdom fail to war

On principles we dearly prize.

We do not know – we can but deem,

And he is loyalest and best

Who takes the light full on his breast

And follows it throughout the dream.

The broken light, the shadows wide –

Behold the battle-field displayed!

God save the vanquished from the blade,

The victor from the victor’s pride.

If, Salomon, the blessed dew

That falls upon the Blue and Gray

Is powerless to wash away

The sin of differing from you,

Remember how the flood of years

Has rolled across the erring slain;

Remember, too, the cleansing rain

Of widows’ and of orphans’ tears.

The dead are dead – let that atone:

And though with equal hand we strew

The blooms on saint and sinner too,

Yet God will know to choose his own.

The wretch, whate’er his life and lot,

Who does not love the harmless dead

With all his heart and all his head –

May God forgive him, I shall not.

When, Salomon, you come to quaff

The Darker Cup with meeker face,

I, loving you at last, shall trace

Upon your tomb this epitaph:

“Draw near, ye generous and brave –

Kneel round this monument and weep

For one who tried in vain to keep

A flower from a soldier’s grave.”