Last night I saw an armèd band, whose feet Did take the martial step, although they trod Soundless as waves of light upon the air. (Silent from silent lips the bugle fell.) The wind was wild; but the great flag they bore, Hung motionless, and glittered like a god Above their awful faces while they marched. And when I saw, I understood and said-- "If these are they whom we did love, and give, What seek they?" But one sternly answered me,-- "We seek our comrades whom we left to thee: The weak, who were thy strength; the poor, who had Thy pride; the faint and few who gave to thee One supreme hour from out the day of life, One deed majestic to their century. These were thy trust: how fare they at thy hands? Thy saviors then--are they thy heroes now? Our comrades still; we keep the step with them, _Behold! As thou unto the least of them Shalt do, so dost thou unto us. Amen._" [1] Written for the benefit of the Soldiers' Home at Chelsea, Massachusetts. STRONGER THAN DEATH Who shall tell the story As it was? Write it with the heart's blood? (Pale ink, alas!) Speak it with the soul's lips, Or be dumb? Tell me, singers fled, and Song to come! No answer; like a shell the silence curls, And far within it leans a whisper out, Breathless and inarticulate, and whirls And dies as dies an ailing dread or doubt. And I--since there is found none else than I, No stronger, sweeter voice than mine, to tell This tale of love that cannot stoop to die-- Were fain to be the whisper in the shell; Were fain to lose and spend myself within The sacred silence of one mighty heart, And leaning from it, hidden there, to win Some finer ear that, listening, bends apart. "Fly for your lives!" The entrails of the earth Trembled, resounding to the cry, That, like a chasing ghost, around the mine Crept ghastly: "The pit 's on fire! Fly!" * * * * * The shaft, a poisoned throat whose breath was death, Like hell itself grown sick of sin, Hurled up the men; haggard and terrible; Leaping upon us through the din That all our voices made; and back we shrank From them as from the starting dead; Recoiling, shrieked, but knew not why we shrieked; And cried, but knew not what we said. And still that awful mouth did toss them up: "The last is safe! The last is sound!" We sobbed to see them where they sunk and crawled, Like beaten hounds, upon the ground. Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed; One reached to clutch the air away His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one Knelt down--but he was old--to pray. We huddled there together all that night, Women and men from the wild Town; I heard a shrill voice cry, "We all are up, But some--ye have forgot--are down!"