Old pioneers, how fare your souls to-day?
They seem to be
Imminent about this pastoral way,
This sunny lea,
The elms and oaks you knew, greenly renew
Their leaves each spring,
But never comes the hour again which drew
Your world from view.
Here in a mood I lay, deep in the grass,
Between the graves;
And saw ye rise, ye shadowy forms, and pass
O'er the wind's waves;
Sunk eyes and bended head, wherefrom is fled
The light of life;
Even as the land, whose early youth is dead,
Whose glory fled.
With eighty years gone over what remains
For tongue to tell?
Hence was it that in silence, with no pains
At last 'twas well,
Under these trees to creep, for ultimate sleep
To soothe regret,
For the world's ways, for war, let mankind reap,
You said, and weep.
Abram Rutledge died, ere the great war
Ruined the land.
His well-loved son was struck on fields afar
By a brother's hand.
Then brought they him, O pioneer, on his bier
To the hill and the tree,
Back home and laid him, son of Trenton, here,
Your own grave near.
Of all unuttered griefs, of vaguest woes,
None equals this:
Forgotten hands, and work that no one knows
Whose work it is;
Good gifts bequeathed, but never earned, or spurned
In hate or pride;
And the boon of an age destroyed, ere a cycle turned
O'er you inurned.
Abram Rutledge lies in a sunken grave,
Dust and no more,
Let Freedom fail, it is naught to him, who was brave,
Who stood to the fore.
The oaks and elms he knew, greenly renew
Their leaves each spring,
But gone his dream with that last hour which drew
His world from view.
