So here again was War! Here again were pain and sickness, hunger and cold, solitude and despair, to be endured and defied; death itself to be faced--madness even, and soul-decay! Armies of men had gone out, had laid themselves down and filled up the ditches with their bodies, to make a bridge for Freedom to pass on. And the ditches were not yet full--another life was needed! Nor must he think himself too good for the sacrifice; there had been greater men than he, no doubt, burned up in the Wilderness, and blown to pieces by the cannon at “Bloody Angle”; there had been dreamers of mighty dreams among them--and they were dead, and all their dreams were dead. And neither must he love his own too dearly; there had been women who had suffered and died in that War, and babes who had perished by tens of thousands; and they, too, had been born with agony, had been loved and yearned for, and wept and prayed for. So, out of the dead past, were voices calling to Thyrsis; he heard them in the night--time as one mighty symphony of grief. They had died for nothing, unless the Republic should be saved, unless their dream of freedom and justice could be made real. And for what was the poet but that? So that the new generations might know what their fathers had done--that the youth of America might be roused and thrilled once more! Surely it could not be that the land was all sunk in selfishness and unfaith--that there were no longer any generous souls who could be stirred by a trumpet-call, and led forth to strike a new blow for the great hope of Humanity! Section 17. The long winter dragged by, and the fury of it seemed to increase; they were as if besieged by demons of cold and storm. There came another blizzard, and the snows drifted down to their hollow by the edge of the woods, so that it was two days before they could get out, even to the farm-house. And there was no place for them to walk--a path from their house to Thyrsis’ study was a labor of half a day to dig. Also Corydon caught a cold, which ran in due course through the little family, and added to their misery and discomfort. The snow seemed to be symbolical, walling them in from all the world. “There is no help”, it seemed to say to them; whatever strength they got they must wring out of their own hearts. Here in this place, it seemed to Thyrsis, he learned the real meaning of Winter; he saw it as primitive man had seen it, a cruel and merciless assailant, a fiend that came ravening, dealing destruction and death. He thought of the ode by Thomas Campbell-- “Archangel! Power of desolation! Fast descending as thou art, Say, hath mortal invocation Spells to touch thy stony heart?” Surely no Runic Odin, who “howled his war-song to the gale”, no Lapland savage who cowered in his hut, ever panted for the respite of the spring-time more than these two lovers in their tiny cottage.