Another Kipling Tuesday

The American Rebellion 1776 Before   Twas not while England's sword unsheathed           Put half a world to flight,        Nor while their new-built cities breathed           Secure behind her might;        Not while she poured from Pole to Line           Treasure and ships and men--        These worshippers at Freedoms shrine           They did not quit her then!          Not till their foes were driven forth           By England o'er the main--        Not till the Frenchman from the North          Had gone with shattered Spain;        Not till the clean-swept oceans showed           No hostile flag unrolled,        Did they remember that they owed           To Freedom--and were bold! After   The  snow lies thick on Valley Forge,   The ice on the Delaware,   But the poor dead soldiers of King George   They neither know nor care.   Not though the earliest primrose break   On the sunny side of the lane, And scuffling rookeries awake   Their England' s spring again.   They will not stir when the drifts are gone,   Or the ice melts out of the bay: And the men that served with Washington   Lie all as still as they.   They will  not  stir  though  the mayflower blows   In the moist dark woods of pine, And every rock-strewn pasture shows   Mullein and columbine.   Each for his land, in a fair fight,   Encountered strove, and died, And the kindly earth that knows no spite   Covers them side by side.   She is too busy to think of war;   She has all the world to make gay; And,  behold, the yearly flowers are   Where they were in our fathers' day!   Golden-rod by the pasture-wall   When the columbine is dead, And sumach leaves that turn, in fall,   Bright as the blood they shed. More Kipling available here.