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Edgar Lee Masters - Memorabilia
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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.
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