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Soldiers of the light

Chapter 41: TO THE MEMORY OF RICHARD WATSON GILDER
By Helen Gray Cone
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About This Book

The collection gathers lyric and narrative poems that meditate on war, sacrifice, and memory, moving between vivid battlefield tableaux and quieter scenes of civic and domestic life. Several pieces evoke a major battle with landscape detail and soldierly courage, while others adopt ballad, elegy, and devotional forms to reflect on leadership, loss, and public mourning. Recurring themes include the tension between the desire for peace and the exigencies of duty, the sanctity of sacrifice, and the labor of remembrance. A blend of patriotic, mournful, and contemplative tones also turns toward urban hardship, maritime hauntings, and spiritual consolation.

TO THE MEMORY OF RICHARD WATSON GILDER

Again the summer days beside the sea:
The billowing of the russet-feathered grass
In the warm wind; the shadow of clouds that sail;
The orange field-flower flaming like a torch
To light all wings of wavering butterflies;
The long wash of the everlasting wave,
The same and not the same forevermore.
Again the summer nights, a-throb with stars,
And that clear Star, the glory of the Lyre,
White-burning, hung at the high heart of heaven.
Again the summer days, the summer nights,—
All is as it hath been.
Nay, not for those
Who have felt the shadow fall of that strange cloud
Which yet seems full of light, the shadow of death,
Is aught as it hath been. The dark sea-line
Solemnly deepens, and the sunset sweeps
With graver splendors through its pageant-pomp.
I know not why these meadows, yester-year,
And these stark pines against the sunset-rose,
And these young woods where haply one beholds
In some brown pool the mirrored cardinal-flower
Lovely and lonely,—why along these ways
Sprang up so oft the sudden thought of him,
A wayside joy; why memories of his song
Floated upon the silvery thistledown;
Yet near he seemed. And not less near to-day,
Though all he loved, and sang of, gleams through tears,
Fresh-haloed with the pathos of the thought
That near or far we shall not see again
Those luminous eyes whence looked his lyric soul.
Star of the Lyre! a spirit like to thee,
White-burning, close to the high heart of heaven,
We knew; a spirit as clear, with ardors pure
Trembling to every touch of the divine
Serene sphere-music. Such was he, our friend,
Our singer; such is he, though mortal sense
Be sealed.
Now to his name I give this book,
Reverent, as placing on an altar-stone
A gift; though slight, not all unmeet—since he
Served all his years a Soldier of the Light:
From those first days when the brave gentle boy,
In passion of service for the land he loved,
Stood by the thunderous guns of Gettysburg,
To those last days of service not less true
In the loud streets and swarming human hives,
The clangor and flare, and all the civic stress
Of his beloved city,—his and ours,
Where such as he may rear the City of Light.