For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes,
All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal
with causes.
Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower
the boats?
Quick the man put by the question. "But the Orient, none
could save her;
We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare;
And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver;
Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where."
At the shock, he said, the Vanguard shook through all
her timbers oaken;
It was like the shock of Doomsday,—not a tar but shuddered hard.
All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken
By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying,
In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
Soared the Orient into darkness with her living and her dying:
"Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said.
Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending
of the foeman;
Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.
While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the church-yard sod;
And, helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
Climbed his babe to mother's breast, as climbs the slow world
up to God.
A RESURRECTION
Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my breast;
In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head.
I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honored above the rest
For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead.
But at last, when the hour was ripe—was it sudden-remembered word?
Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that
stole?
I was 'ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that
stirred,
Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew
my Soul.