Ballads of Battle/The Dead Man

by Joseph Lee

THE DEAD MAN

He lay unasking of our aid,
His grim face questioning the sky,
While we stood by with idle spade,
And gazed on him with curious eye.

Upon one hand a little ring;
A little earth clutched in one hand,
As he would bear some kindly thing
Unto that new and unknown land.

This unnamed heap of human dust,
Buoyant so late with human breath,
And now majestic and august
With th' vast indifference of death!

Within that many-mansioned brain,
A-through its corridors and cells,
Do no ghosts flit? Comes ne'er again
Old Memory with her mystic spells?

Do images of wife or child
Round these unseeing eyes still hover?
Still heart, comes there no stirring wild,
No cry for her might be thy lover?

Nay, silence alone doth clothe thy clay,
Thy mien is big with only mystery;
No hieroglyphics here to say
Where was thy home, and what thy history.

A chilly wind stirs in the grass;
There comes the night-jar's shrilling cry;
I see no recognition pass
Into thy once beholding eye.

Comes the grim converse of a gun,
But brings thee neither fear nor frown;
Thou for thyself a Peace hast won,
The bundle of thy life laid down.

Into its cell thy clay we thrust,
And turn, and find we have no tears:
Deep be thy sleep, O once dear dust,
Through the intolerable years!