Through lack of vigilance. God, how the days
Lengthened their minutes into weary hours,
And weary hours to days! as if the time
Were frozen with the fear that gripped my heart,
And moved not onward to the destined end,
Ordained ere time. I could but send some men
Toward the frontier of her land and mine;
Yet some I trusted knew that to my love
There were no frontiers but that boundary
Between the quick and dead. They went in quest;