'I can do nothing here; I am needed elsewhere.'
Our young hero was dead!
They composed his limbs, laying him on a blanket under the trees, and Grace sat down beside him, tearless still, but pale as her dress, or the white hand lying cold over the soldier's pulseless heart.
'Robert, send them away,' she said to me, as sympathizing strangers pressed round; and they left us alone with the dead. I spoke at last the commonplaces of consolation, suggested and modified by the hour and my soldier feelings.
'Yes, Robert,' she answered, 'I gave him long ago. God will comfort me for my hero—in time. Do not speak to me just yet. Do not let any one come.'
The tears came now, and she wept bitterly, silently, under the starry banner, beside the dead. I heard the hum of many voices, and now and then a cry of pain, and knew they were all helping the sufferers. Then I turned to her again. Her streaming hair swept the ground, golden in the light. Her fair face was hidden on the cold dead face. And I dared not speak to her. Oh, that picture! Poor Grace Fanning! and the silver, silver moonlight over all.
POETRY AND POETICAL SELECTIONS.
'Oh, deem not in this world of strife,
An idle art the Poet brings;
Let high Philosophy control,
And sages calm the stream of life;
'Tis he refines its fountain springs,
The nobler passions of the soul.'
In the annals of literature, Poetry antedates Prose. Creation precedes Providence, not merely in the order of sequence, but what is usually called intellectual and physical grandeur. So in genius and taste, Poetry transcends prose. In the work of Creation the Almighty broke the awful stillness of Eternity, by His first creative fiat, and angels were the first-born of God. They took their thrones in the galleries of the universe, and in silent contemplation sat. They spoke not; for words, as signs of thought or will or emotion, were not then conceived, and, consequently, then unborn. They gazed in rapture on one another, and in solemn silence thought. Their emotions bodied forth the Anthem of Creation.