Now far beyond the tumult and the hate,
The white-clad nurses and the surgeons wait
The backward currents of tormented life,
When on the waiting silences shall come
The screams of men, and, ere those lips are dumb,
The searching probe, the ligature and knife.
II
Was it for such, the brutehood and the pain,
Civilization gave her holy fire
Unto thy wardship, and the snowy spire