Yet whether at Thermopylæ Where battled the intrepid Greek, Or Waterloo—their quarry still The red-eyed ravening vultures seek; Where prowl the jackal and the fox And the swart raven whets his beak. X And somewhere, though by Alien seas The tide of Hate unceasing frets; For dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn The red sun rises, no, nor sets, Save where the wraith of War is seen Above her glittering bayonets. *SEVEN* I How fared the body when the soul In olden days had taken flight? Had passed as through a shutter slips A trembling shaft of summer light! And all that once was Life’s warm glow Had sudden changed to dreadful night! II How fared the mourners; how the Priest; How spoken his funereal theme? What dirges for the Heroic dead What flowers to soften death’s extreme? Was Life to them a wayside Inn Death the beginning of a dream? III We cannot know; except by tales Caught in the traveller’s flying loom, Or carven granite friezes found Or parchment penned in convent gloom; Or here and there, defying Time Some long-dead Emperor’s giant tomb. IV Where tower the steep Egyptian cones By couriers of the storm bestrid, Wrapped in his blackening cerements Sahura lies in shadow hid, While billowy sand-curves rise and dash Like surf, against his Pyramid. V And on the bald Norweyan shores When Odin for the Viking came, A ship was launched, and on it placed With solemn state, the Hero’s frame; The torch applied, and sent to sea, A double burial,—wave and flame. VI And when the Hindu Prince lay prone— In final consecration dire His Hindu Princess followed on And climbed the blazing funeral pyre, To stand in living sacrifice Transfigured in her robes of fire. VII Where the red Indian of the Plains To the Great Spirit bowed his head, On pole-built scaffold, Eagle-plumed, The painted warrior laid his dead; Beneath, the favorite charger slain And by the Chief his weapons spread. VIII We clothe our dead in modish dress Dust unto dust the Preacher saith, The church-bells toll, the organ peals, And mourners wait with ebbing breath; Oh! grave, this is thy mockery, The weird farce-comedy of Death. IX Nay! burn the shell with simplest rites; Scatter its ashes to the skies; And on the stairways of the clouds In winding spirals let it rise; What needs the soul of mortal garb Whether in Hell or Paradise? X Aye! lost and gone; what cares the corse When Death unfolds his sable wings, Whether it rest in wind-swept tree Or where the deep-sea echo rings? Be laid to sleep in Potter’s Field Or lone Iona’s cairn of Kings? *EIGHT* I