Memorial Day

By Maryhale Woolsey

Here in this quiet place of sun and shade
Where spring has entered in her gentlest mood —
Here where birds feel the sacred solitude,
And mute the songs their vibrant throats have made —
Here where our loved and lost ones lie asleep,
Wrapped in the last frail beauty we could give —
Here we may kneel, and for a moment live
With them again, though graves be still and deep.

It is no futile gesture — that we place
Our fragrant gifts their hands may never touch;
The love that prompts our giving is so much
Beyond the mean control of time and space
That it can find and reach them where they are,
Who smile with God beside some distant star.

(1940)