Leaving the War Behind
Leaving the War Behind
for Elihu Burritt, peacemaker
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
- H. W. Longfellow, “Christmas Bells”
1863, your old friend Longfellow almost
despairing. What a year! The Union
torn. Chancellorsville. War’s ravenous mouth.
And then came Vicksburg, Gettysburg.
The whole land lay in a bloody drouth,
the cannon thundered in the South,
and Elihu, you sailed away. For years
you let the ink flow like a sea
to float the cause of Peace. Yet you found
no peace at home. Was it a personal
surrender, to be England-bound?
And with the sound
of waves and seabirds, did you leave
behind the burden of a homeland
north to south a battleground?
Could a foreign landscape comfort
you? Or did war images confound –
the carols drowned
in military march-time in your head?
As summer waned, the loss of Chickamauga.
Brother killing brother in a marshy fen.
Elihu, did you never quite give up
the distant hope – oh where, and when? –
of peace on earth, good-will to men?
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2011
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