Upon one battlefield is writ in blood
The story of more woe than all the years
Can wash away, e’en with the cleansing flood
Of centuries of peace. Blind, sickening tears
Are caused to flow that never mailed hand
Will seek to dry. There glassy grows the eye
Of him who looked with joy upon the land,
Rich now with death’s ripe harvest. One weak sigh,
Then fades the sky, the fields, and all--and then
The awful silence which alone will say
To those at home, he died, but how or when
Remains a secret of the bloody day.
What logic is there that can justify
The wasting harvest field, the empty home,
The blank despair that comes at last to lie
On faces left to fare their way alone,
Widowed and orphaned--and for naught but this--
To keep a royal throne from tottering down,
To hold a mile of boundary where it is,
To save a scepter, or preserve a crown?