"The dead all rise; and both are true;
Both wholesome doctrines,—old, not new."
My friend returned, "He aims a blow
To strike the sins of long ago,—
"Yet shields, the while, with studied phrase,
The evil present in these days.
"Doth God in heaven impute no crime
To prophets who belie their time?"
—We turned away among the tombs:
The bees were in the clover-blooms;
The crickets leaped to let us pass;
And God's sweet breath was on the grass.
We spelled the legends on the stones:
The graves were full of martyrs' bones,—
Of bodies which the rack once brake
In witness for the dear Lord's sake,—
Of ashes gathered from the pyres
Of saints whose souls fled up through fires.
I heard him murmur, as we passed,
"Thus won they all the crown at last;