The Dead! Upon a purple-bordered scroll
We wrote their names; then gazed awhile, and said:
"These are the fallen; these, our honored dead,
The silent ones in Death's vast muster roll.
This one was strong and ruddy; that one frail,
Though fleet of foot and keen. The first one met
His fate in that fierce fight at Courcelette;
The other died of wounds at Passchendaele."
And thus we mused, pointing from name to name
With sad, slow count. We spoke of things like grass,
And withered leaves, and faded flowers, birth,
Old age, decay and dust, glory and fame,
And other strange mortalities that pass
At length into the all-insatiate earth.
II
Then, suddenly, through the mist that wrapped our sight,
An utterance fell, as of great waters flowing—
Slow, but with mightier accent ever growing
Around a blazing shaft of central light:
"Fallen! There is no downward plunge. The estate
Is high. Go!—roll thy plumb-line up, and ask
Thy Master for His measures, as the task
Is one that would the heavens triangulate,"
And so were compassed life's fine agonies;
By ranging hopes, and longings cut adrift
From earth's unstable shores; by faiths that spanned
Illimitable wastes and wrecking seas;
By noble strands of nature, scattered swift
From the white fingers of God's spacious hand.
The Hidden Scar
No blow, no threat, no movement of the hand.
No word burst from the leash of calm control,
Betraying passions slumbering in the soul;
But friendship's added years could not withstand
A curve that rose unbidden and unplanned
From the flexed silence of the lips—a dart
That struck, rending the texture of the heart,
And, entering deeper, seared like a brand.
Some years have passed. To-day, no lure of mine
Restores the confidence he gave of old;
The outer court of strangers with its forms
Of soulless exchange—there we meet. The shrine
Within where sacred fires once burned is cold,
And love no more the ashen altar warms.