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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
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Francis Saltus Saltus
Graves
The sad night-wind, sighing o’er sea and strand,
Haunts the cold marble where Napoleon sleeps;
O’er Charlemagne’s grave, far in the northern land,
A vigil through the centuries it keeps.
O’er Grecian kings its plaintive music sweeps;
Proud Philip’s tomb is by its dark wings fanned,
And round old Pharaohs, deep in desert sand,
Where the grim Sphinx leers to the stars, it creeps.
Yet weary it is of this chill, spectral gloom,
For mouldering grandeur it can have no care,
Rich mausoleums in their granite doom
It fain would leave, to wander on elsewhere,
To cool the violets upon Gautier’s tomb,
And lull the long grass over Baudelaire.
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