So they lay in the line, with the hard hands clutching the muskets: Men of the farm and the forge and the carpenter’s bench and the engine; Men from the counter and desk; and the teacher was there with his pupils; There the bold-eyed firemen, the turbulent lads of the cities; There the men of the shore,--they had left the broad nets and the fishing; There the men of the axe,--they had left the tall trees in the forest. What was it drew them away from their labor and love and contentment, Buying and selling and scheming, and building, and yoking the oxen? Made them willing to fling down Life, the mysterious jewel, All the lovely and strange thing that it is, with the pleasant Light of the kindly sun, and the sweet of the grass in the summer, Salt of the large sea-breeze, and the mild stars shining in heaven, Joy of the free whole body, and wonderful wafts of the spirit? All a man hath will he give for his life,--but his life for his duty! This is the touchstone of manhood, the swift and the final election, Test of the heart that is true to some lofty and ultimate brightness Secretly set above self; at its blindest, shall God not accept it? Ah, but how blessed are they,--not summoned by voices misleading, Lured of the marsh-light, and tricked to the true defence of a falsehood,-- Who with their measure of power, conscious, half-conscious, unconscious, Work the Eternal Will, in the chaos a force of salvation, Motes of the dust as it streams, yet touched with the light of God’s purpose! VII So they lay in the line, as the discord diminished, and almost Seemed as a silence, to sense that was drowned with the sound of the cannon. Hung on the spirits of all men a prescience of something impending Great and strange, as at times when thick darkness possesses the noonday; Yet was the sky most bright with its burning azure; and strangely Shifted the wind, and lifted the lingering smoke as a curtain; Reek of the powder drew off, and the valley was bare and apparent, Dip of the hollowing plain, and the trampled green of the cornfields.