Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone. <br />Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. <br /> <br />"We have buried him now," thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced. <br />They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced. <br />They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day. <br />Now you were ended. They praised you ... and laid you away. <br /> <br />The others, that mourned you in silence and terror and truth, <br />The window bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth, <br />The mocked and the scorned and the sounded, the lame and the poor, <br />That should have remembered forever, ... Remember no more. <br /> <br />Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call, <br />The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall? <br />They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones, <br />A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons, <br />The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began. <br />The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man. <br /> <br />Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten... under the stone. <br />Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. <br />Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame -- <br />To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name, <br />To live in mankind, far, far more than ... to live in a name.<br /><br />Vachel Lindsay<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-eagle-that-is-forgotten/
