The guns were silent, and the silent hills <br />had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze <br />I gazed upon the vales and on the rills, <br />And whispered, "What of these?' and "What of these? <br />These long forgotten dead with sunken graves, <br />Some crossless, with unwritten memories <br />Their only mourners are the moaning waves, <br />Their only minstrels are the singing trees <br />And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully <br /> <br />I watched the place where they had scaled the height, <br />The height whereon they bled so bitterly <br />Throughout each day and through each blistered night <br />I sat there long, and listened - all things listened too <br />I heard the epics of a thousand trees, <br />A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew <br />The waves were very old, the trees were wise: <br />The dead would be remembered evermore- <br />The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies, <br />And slept in great battalions by the shore.<br /><br />Leon Gellert<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-last-to-leave/
