I was doing other things but the poems I heard were not by Americans. Are there no American poems that would have been appropriate?
On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone, That memory may their deeds redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
O Thou who made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, -- Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raised to them and Thee. - Ralph Waldo Emerson