SOLDIER BURIED ON THE BATTLEFIELD

And when the wind in the tree-tops roared,

The soldier asked from the deep dark grave:

"Did the banner flutter then?"

"Not so, my hero," the wind replied.

"The fight is done, but the banner won,

Thy comrades of old have borne it hence,

Have borne it in triumph hence."

Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave:

"I am content"

Then he heareth the lovers laughing pass,

and the soldier asks once more:

"Are these not the voices of them that love,

That love--and remember me?"

"Not so, my hero," the lovers say,

"We are those that remember not;

For the spring has come and the earth has smiled,

And the dead must be forgot."

Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave:

"I am content."


A poem quoted by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in a Memorial Day speech at Harvard in 1895 entitled "The Soldier's Faith". (Theodore Roosevelt admired that 1895 speech so much that as President he nominated Holmes for the US Supreme Court.) Holmes in the 1895 speech spoke of "part of the soldier's faith: Having known great things, to be content with silence." He cited this poem as "a little song sung by a warlike people on the Danube, which seemed to me fit for a soldier's last word...a song of the sword in its scabbard, a song of oblivion and peace. A Soldier has been buried on the battlefield." (A portion of this poem was recited in the 1950 Hollywood movie about Holmes, "The Magnificent Yankee.")