But wasted lands, famished cities, and slaughtered armies are not all that is contained in "the purple testament of bleeding war." Every soldier is connected with others, as all of you, by dear ties of kindred, love, and friendship. He has been sternly summoned from the embrace of family. To him there is perhaps an aged mother, who fondly hoped to lean her bending years on his more youthful form; perhaps a wife, whose life is just entwined inseparably with his, now condemned to wasting despair; perhaps sisters, brothers. As he falls on the field of war, must not all these rush with his blood? But who can measure the distress that radiates as from a bloody sun, penetrating innumerable homes? Who can give the gauge and dimensions of this infinite sorrow? Tell me, ye who feel the bitterness of parting with dear friends and kindred, whom you watch tenderly till the last golden sands are run out and the great hour-glass is turned, what is the measure of your anguish? Your friend departs, soothed by kindness and in the arms of Love: the soldier gasps out his life with no friend near, while the scowl of Hate darkens all that he beholds, darkens his own departing soul. Who can forget the anguish that fills the bosom and crazes the brain of Lenore, in the matchless ballad of Bürger, when seeking in vain among returning squadrons for her lover left dead on Prague's ensanguined plain? But every field of blood has many Lenores. All war is full of desolate homes, as is vividly pictured by a master poet of antiquity, whose verse is an argument. "But through the bounds of Grecia's land, Who sent her sons for Troy to part, See mourning, with much suffering heart, On each man's threshold stand, On each sad hearth in Grecia's land. Well may her soul with grief be rent; She well remembers whom she sent, She sees them not return: Instead of men, to each man's home Urns and ashes only come, And the armor which they wore,-- Sad relics to their native shore. For Mars, the barterer of the lifeless clay, Who sells for gold the slain, _And holds the scale, in battle's doubtful day, High balanced o'er the plain_, From Ilium's walls for men returns Ashes and sepulchral urns,-- Ashes wet with many a tear, Sad relics of the fiery bier. Round the full urns the general groan Goes, as each their kindred own: And one that 'mid the armed throng He sunk in glory's slaughtering tide, And for another's consort died. * * * * * Others they mourn whose monuments stand By Ilium's walls on foreign strand; Where they fell in beauty's bloom, There they lie in hated tomb, Sunk beneath the massy mound, In eternal chambers bound."[29] [29] Agamemnon of Æschylus: _Chorus_. This is from the beautiful translation by John Symmons. III.