Children Of The War
SHRUNKEN little bodies, pallid baby faces,
Eyes of staring terror, innocence defiled,
Tiny bones that strew the sand of silent places,
— This upon our own star where Jesus was a child.
Broken buds of April, is there any garden
Where they yet may blossom, comforted of sun,
While their sad Creator bows to ask their pardon
For the life He gave them, life and death in one?
Spared by steel and hunger, still shall horror blazon
Those white and tender spirits with anguish unforgot;
Half a century hence the haggard look shall gaze on
The outrage of a mother, shall see a grandsire shot.
Man who wings the azure, lassoes the hoof sparkling,
Fire-maned steeds of glory and binds them to his car,
Cannot man whose searchlight leaves no horizon darkling
Safeguard little children upon our golden star?
I was aware she'd written some travel narrative, though I'm not a fan of that genre and I'd read some of her poetry, which was, actually, not bad for a minor poet of an idiom that doesn't grab me.
What I hadn't known was that she was also a translator, in fact, she and her mother worked together on a translation from Spanish, Romantic legends of Spain
by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. In the introduction of that book she showed that she would have probably gotten a kick out of having her most famous poem, in which she crowned her country's "good with brotherhood" sung in a number of languages. Describing her mother she said:
"Mrs. Cornelia Frances Bates (1826-1908), a graduate of Mount Holyoke in the days of Mary Lyon and the widow of a Congregational minister, took up the study of Spanish at the age of seventy-one. Until her death ten years later, the proverbial ten years of "labor and sorrow," her Spanish readings and translations were a keen intellectual delight. Her Spanish Bible, from which she had committed many passages to memory, was found at her death no less worn than her English one. Even a few hours before dying, she repeated in Spanish, without the failure of a syllable, the Shepherd's Psalm and the Lord's Prayer."
I'll bet hearing her song in different languages would have brought a tear to her eye, in joy but also remembering her mother's devotion to the Spanish language. Though, from everything I can see, she'd never have approved of the venue in which it was sung.
There is everything for Rush Limbaugh and his fellow liars and hypocrites to hate in America the Beautiful, they hate beauty, they hate ideals, they hate the possibility of Bates ideals becoming actual, in life, in the life of the United States. Their careers have been dedicated to making millions of dollars by lying us out of making America her ideal of America. They worship America the horrible, concussed and brain damaged by their imperial, materialistic bigotry, an America that couldn't be farther from her song which they turn into a maudlin mockery of what she said.
America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
No comments:
Post a Comment