Young, and so fair! Yet were it worse, methinks,
To leave thee where the gentle and the brave,
The loyal-hearted and the chivalrous,
And they that loved their God, have all been swept,
Like the sere leaves, away. For them no hearth
Through the wide land was left inviolate,
No altar holy; therefore did they fall,
Rejoicing to depart. The soil is steep’d
In noble blood; the temples are gone down;
The voice of prayer is hush’d, or fearfully