This wall was builded in our fathers’ days-- Valorous days when life was lusty and the land was new. Resemble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn. To us they left the law, Order, simplicity, obedience, And the wall is the bond they gave the nation At its birth of courage and unflinching faith. Before the epic here inscribed began, They wrote their course upon a trackless sea. O, tiny craft, bearing a nation’s seed! Frail shallop, quick with unborn states! Autumn was mellow in the fatherland when they set sail, And winter deepened as they neared the West. Out of the desert sea they came at last, And their hearts warmed to see that frozen land. O, first gray dawn that filtered through the dark! Bleak, glorious birth-hour of our northern states! They stood upon the shore like new created men; On barren solitudes of sand they stood, The conquered sea behind, the unconquered wilderness before. Some died that year beneath the cruel cold, And some for heartsick longing and the pang Of homes remembered and souls torn asunder. That spring the new-plowed field for bread of life Bordered the new-dug acre marked for death; Beside the springing corn they laid in the sweet, dark earth The young man, strong and free, the maiden fair and trustful, The little child, and the uncomplaining mother. Across the meadow, by the ancient pines, Where I, the child of life that lived that spring, Drink in the fragrances of the young year, The field-wall meets one grimly squared and straight. Beyond it rise the old tombs, gray and restful, And the upright slates record the generations. Stiffly aslant before the northern blasts, Like the steadfast, angular beliefs Of those whom they commemorate, the headstones stand, Cemented deep with moss and invisible roots. The rude inscriptions charged with faith and love, Graceless as Death himself, yet sweet as Death, Are half erased by the impartial storms. As children lisping words which move to laughter Are themselves poems of unconscious melody, So the old gravestones with their crabbed muse Are beautiful for their halting words of faith, Their groping love that had no gift of song. But all the broken tragedy of life And all the yearning mystery of death Are celebrated in sweet epitaphs of vines and violets. Close by the wall a peristyle of pines Sings requiem to all the dead that sleep.