Marching Feet

Katharine Lee Bates 1859 (Falmouth) – 1929 (Wellesley)



THESE August nights, hushed but for drowsy peep
Of fledglings, tremble with a strange vibration,
A sound too far for hearing, sullen, dire,
Shaking the earth.
Even within the swaying veils of sleep
We are haunted by a horror, a mistrust,
A muffled perturbation,
Vaguely aware
Of prodigies in birth,
Of brooding thunders unbelievable,
Fierce forces that conspire
Against mankind.
We start awake;
The purple glooms, all sweet
With dewy fragrance, bear
Our eyelids down, but still we feel the beat,
Dull, doomful, irretrievable,
Of Europe's marching feet,
Enchanted, blind,
By wizard music led
Over crushed blossoms, through the mocking dust,
To baths of blood and fire.
Beyond the seas, in these hushed hills we dread
That hollow, rhythmic tread
Of nation against nation,
That ancient, bitter thrust
Of war against a world that might be fair
As any golden star that rides the air.
We cannot rest for marching feet that must
Harvest and home forsake,
Inexorably called to take
The road of desolation,
Trampling on hearts that break.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

51 sec read
36

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDAEBFDGHIJKFKGKILEHLLBEFFEJJBJ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,005
Words 172
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 33

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful Bates was born in Falmouth Massachusetts and lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton Massachusetts An historic plaque marks the site of her home The daughter of a Congregational pastor she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley While teaching there she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Comans death in 1915 It is debated if this relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain or a platonic relationship called sometimes Boston marriages as the local historical society of her birthplace maintain more…

All Katharine Lee Bates poems | Katharine Lee Bates Books

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