"Then thy cry of agony:
'Earth is all one grave to me,'
Echoing shall come back to thee
In a chant of victory,
Echoed from the crystal sea,
From the living victors free,
Ransomed everlastingly."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Partly suggested by a passage in Longfellow's "Hyperion."
The Sepulchre and the Shrine.
"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
The great torrent of the First Crusade had been sweeping for weeks through the valley of the Danube. Along that "highway of nations" tribe after tribe had poured westward, leaving its deposit in castle and village, on dominant height and in sheltered hollow. And now the rush of men swept back eastward: no slowly advancing tide of emigration, but a wild torrent of enthusiasm, which would leave behind it nothing but graves and the bones of unburied thousands. And yet in that death were seeds of life.
Week after week the Lady of the Tannenburg had seen from the terrace of her castle the bands of peasants pass on their way,—men and women and little children, with the red-cross on the shoulder,—to the Tomb of Christ, to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel. Multitudes almost entirely composed of the poor: no plumed helmets or richly caparisoned war-horses. The red-cross, of common stuff, was fastened on the poor garments of the peasants. The only chariots were the rough cart drawn by oxen taken from the plough, carrying the mothers and the little ones, who were too feeble to walk.