The Eagle That Is Forgotten / Vachel Lindsay

     

The Eagle That Is Forgotten

(John P. Altgeld. Born December 30, 1847;

died March 12, 1902)

Sleep softy . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone,
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
“We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day.
Now you were ended. They praised you, . . . and laid you away.

The others, that mourned you in silence and terror and truth,
The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth,
The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor,
That should have remembered forever, . . . remember no more.

Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call,
The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones,
A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons.
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began,
The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.

Sleep softy . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone,
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame —
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name,
To live in mankind, far, far more than to live in a name! —

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Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
from General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, and other poems, 1913

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Vachel Lindsay biography