Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil

Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her;

But these, our brothers, fought for
her,

At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her, 50
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:
Their higher instinct knew

Those love her best who to themselves are true,

And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;

They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,

Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.

Where faith made whole with deed 60
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,

They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them
in death.

Some more substantial boon

Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?

The little that we see
From doubt is never free;
The little that we do

Is but half-nobly true;

With our laborious hiving

What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss,

Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,

After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires,

Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,

Are tossed pell-mell together in the

A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,

Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.

VIII

We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk;

But 't was they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.

We welcome back our bravest and our best;

Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,

Who went forth brave and bright as any here!

I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,

But the sad strings complain, 240
And will not please the ear:

I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane
Again and yet again

Into a dirge, and die away, in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb
turf wraps,

Dark to the triumph which they died to gain :

Fitlier may others greet the living,
For me the past is unforgiving;
I with uncovered head

250

Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not.-Say not

so!