The midnight stars wheel in their course

Through trackless vasts of space,

And every distant sun’s a source

Of motions taking place

Beyond the reach of eye or thought,

Yet part of Heaven’s design

In order infinitely wrought

By majesty divine.

We cannot know the perfect plan

In such a universe,

Nor what its horoscope for man,

Be it for good or worse;

Enough the same law rules the stars

And human destinies,

And man the future makes or mars

As he observeth these;

As he the lesson of the past

Applies to issues new,

And makes experience forecast

The Fate which cometh true

Because it is the TRUTH and moves

Though oft in courses strange,

And like the time-eternal proves,

The stars that never change.

There they come with feeble step,

There they come with lessened rank,

And yet pathetic with the martial air

And ancient discipline of field and camp!

There they come with sounding pipe,

There they come with armor clank;

The dimming uniform’s parade each year

And ensign’s flaunting—Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

Thus they pass in broken corps,

Thus they pass in mounted troop,

Across the square in valor’s proud review,

Beneath the victor’s green triumphal arch;

Heads with many a Winter hoar,

Upright shoulders now astoop;

Their once imperial numbers grown so few,

But bravely onward—March! March! March!

Many a soldier’s vacant place,

Many an officer’s blank post,

And many a veteran, too, with touching zeal

To mend the losses hobbling along;

Many a scarred and figured face,

Many a luckless member lost

With silent eloquence the tale reveal

Of desperate battles—On! On! On!

By Gratitude’s tall monuments,

By private cemetery tombs

Where floral wreaths from loving hands lie mute

Upon each honored grave for Memory’s sight;

Bowing heads in reverence,

Treading slow with muffled drums,

With tear-dimmed eye and sorrowful salute

And lowered standard—Right! Left! Right!

Every footfall of the past,

Every annual elapse,

The silent hearts and silent years no more,

Half-echo, mingle in that ghostly tread

And seem to swell the muster vast

And seem to say with hollow steps,

From all that mighty vanguard gone before

To this small rearguard—Dead! Dead! Dead!

A few more years bivouac here,

A few more years of sepulture

In trench or dungeon, grave or moaning deep,

A few more years of Death’s soft slumbering night

Till all that spectral host appear

Before the throned Cynosure

Whose reveille will call them from their sleep

To Heaven’s reviewing—Right! Left! Right!

No shotted cannon, deadly arms,

No trophy of a fallen foe,

Till God define the worthiest conqueror;

Him who has vanquished Death and conquered Doubt

And faced a thousand alarms

Till life sits firmly on his brow

Or echoes through the happy Evermore,

Ye host of victors—Shout! Shout! Shout!

With one foot on the rock of right already won

And one upon the rock of faith no right can be undone,

I stand prophetic-voiced that presently from these

Right peak by peak shall grandly rise in towering Pyrenees.

The Liberty we know and passionately love

Shall bless the vineyards far below that drink the snows above;

And in the guardian frown of Freedom’s lofty height

Shall think ’tis God who cometh down to thunder for the right.

As from the granite base where we must battle for

To firmly plant each sacred Cause, we rear the mountain o’er,

The bolt of stormy skies shall burst above each peak,

Assuring us when man defies oppression God doth speak.

And if from some sheer crag a vanguard hero fall

The while the coward safely lags who’d rather be a thrall,

We’ll set a cross upon the cliff from which he fell

But better still we’ll climb inspired by his fate

To heights of liberty sublime unreached by tyrant’s hate;

And Right shall look at last from mountain-top to land

In glad humanity more vast, in destiny more grand!

The sky was blue and smiling down

Upon a human sea;

Old Glory fluttered, danced and shone

In varicolored glee.

A merry breeze went laughing through

The laughing folds of silk

Until the red and white and blue

Were sylphs with teeth of milk.

Yet not for them the rapturous eyes

Of shouting crowds were bright,

Who came to hail with praise and prize

The hero winged for flight.

“The first to fly,” the challenge read,

“Shall win the wreath and cup.”

He spread his pinions and o’erhead

A dizzy height went up.

“Bravo! Bravo!” they shouted as

He spiralled down and down;

Then surged toward him in a mass

And wreathed him with the crown.

He smiled and in his eyes of blue

And on his cheeks of red

A something noble came to view

As gallantly he said:

“The cup I’ll keep, the wreath I’ll place

Where it by right belongs;

The first to fly my hand shall grace

And you acclaim with tongues.”

So saying towards his ship he stepped

And set the sails again,

Then in a rising circle swept

With sun-kissed face and plane.

They wondered when they saw him rise

Toward the streamered staff

Until he grazed its middle thrice

And cleared it with a laugh;

Until above its gilded ball

He steadied and from high

The trophy flung before them all

With practised hand and eye.

Upon Old Glory’s head the wreath

Fell true and with it fell

The airman’s words to those beneath

Who needed but their spell:

“The first to fly above our land

On wings that never lag

I crown with patriotic hand,

Our country’s starry flag!”

And then he doffed his cap and lo,

A jackie’s suit he wore

As circling still he cried, “Oho,

I’ve flown in peace and war!”

I rubbed my eyes and all was fled

Except the silken folds

Of Glory floating overhead

A sailor-boy which holds.