The 99 Poem Challenge (Fox-Trot-9) ✓

86. Elegy -- No Name

The 99 Poem Challenge
Fox-Trot-9

86. Elegy — No Name

Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.
—Tomb of the Unknowns

The marble tombs hold silent vigil here,
   Accompanied with steps of twenty-one
Resounding through the air from year to year,
   Resounding for these soldiers yet unknown.

While others have returned without their limbs
   Or minds or lives intact, their names are left;
But for these honored dead whose only hymns
   Are scattered to the winds, they are bereft.

The living world will never know these dead
   Who sacrificed their lives, their souls, their names
For freedom's cause, their every substance bled,
   Their epitaphs long-buried in the flames.

Their loved ones, who have yet to see them home,
   Whose prayers are yet unanswered by their tears,
Lie in our hearts wherever they may roam,
   Sharing with us their grief, their hopes, their fears.

Their measures of devotion consecrate
   This sacred ground far more than rhyme of word;
Their courage, scattered to the winds of fate,
   Shall never pass or fade away unheard.

These souls, denied their human rights to fame,
   Now make the stars above their cherished home,
Advancing through the heavens like a flame
   That lights the countless diamonds 'neath the dome.

And so their names, unknown to us on earth,
   Are written in the candle of each star;
And as those stars gave ancient heroes birth,
   So shall our eyes pay tribute from afar.

(To be continued...)

A/N: In English literature, an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. However, the Oxford Handbook of the Elegy notes: "For all of its pervasiveness, however, the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill-defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead."

Meter: Iambic pentameter
Rhyme: abab cdcd...