In ranks across the field are laid
the sons and daughters of our wars.
Their lives across the field displayed,
remember them, they ask no more.
Each a part of who we are,
with their loss – of who we were.
The stretch from life to death is far,
remember them, to them defer.
In ranks across the field they wait,
for us their spirit to uphold –
and continue freedoms fight
to honor them – forevermore.
(The Random Poet:07172021
www.therandompoet.com)
<<<< Note: In their later years the Founding Fathers were generally pessimistic regarding the prospects of the new Republic surviving much beyond their own lifetimes. James Madison was the last of the Founding Fathers to pass away, dying in 1836.
In the 1830’s he wrote a note which he intended to be his last political statement. “As this advice if it ever see the light will not do it until I am no more, it may be considered as issuing from the tomb, where truth alone can be respected, and the happiness of man alone consulted. The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished & perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise.”
Fears of a Setting Sun, Dennis C. Rasmussen, Princeton University Press 2021 >>>>