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To ES Salomon

What!

Salomon! such words from you,  Who call yourself a soldier?

Well,  The Southern brother where he

Slept all your base oration through.

Alike to him — he cannot know  Your praise or blame: as little harm  Your tongue can do him as your armA quarter-century ago.

The brave respect the brave.

The brave  Respect the dead; but you — you draw  That ancient blade, the ass's jaw,

And shake it o'er a hero's grave.

Are you not he who makes to-day  A merchandise of old reknown  Which he persuades this easy

He won in battle far away?

Nay, those the fallen who revile  Have ne'er before the living stood  And stoutly made their battle

And greeted danger with a smile.

What if the dead whom still you hate  Were wrong?

Are you so surely right?  We know the issues of the fight —The sword is but an advocate.

Men live and die, and other men  Arise with knowledges diverse:  What seemed a blessing seems a curse,

And Now is still at odds with Then.

The years go on, the old comes back  To mock the new — beneath the sun  Is nothing new; ideas

Recurrent in an endless track.

What most we censure, men as wise  Have reverently practiced; nor   Will future wisdom fail to

On principles we dearly prize.

We do not know — we can but deem,  And he is loyalest and best  Who takes the light full on his

And follows it throughout the dream.

The broken light, the shadows wide —  Behold the battle-field displayed!  God save the vanquished from the blade,

The victor from the victor's pride.

If,

Salomon, the blessed dew  That falls upon the Blue and Gray  Is powerless to wash

The sin of differing from you,

Remember how the flood of years  Has rolled across the erring slain;  Remember, too, the cleansing rain Of widows' and of orphans' tears.

The dead are dead — let that atone:  And though with equal hand we strew  The blooms on saint and sinner too,

Yet God will know to choose his own.

The wretch, whate'er his life and lot,  Who does not love the harmless dead  With all his heart and all his head —May God forgive him,

I shall not.

When,

Salomon, you come to quaff  The Darker Cup with meeker face,  I, loving you at last, shall

Upon your tomb this epitaph:"Draw near, ye generous and brave —  Kneel round this monument and weep  For one who tried in vain to keepA flower from a soldier's grave." Who in a Memorial Day oration protested bitterlyagainst decorating the graves of Confederate dead

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Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842– circa 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The De…
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