Round the wide earth, from the red field your valour has won, Blown with the breath of the far-speaking gun, Goes the word. Bravely you spoke through the battle cloud heavy and dun. Tossed though the speech toward the mist-hidden sun, The world heard. Hell would have shrunk from you seeking it fresh from the fray, Grim with the dust of the battle, and gray From the fight. Heaven would have crowned you, with crowns not of gold but of bay, Owning you fit for the light of her day, Men of night. Far through the cycle of years and of lives that shall come, There shall speak voices long muffled and dumb, Out of fear. And through the noises of trade and the turbulent hum, Truth shall rise over the militant drum, Loud and clear. Then on the cheek of the honester nation that grows, All for their love of you, not for your woes, There shall lie Tears that shall be to your souls as the dew to the rose; Afterward thanks, that the present yet knows Not to ply! ALEXANDER CRUMMELL--DEAD Back to the breast of thy mother, Child of the earth! E'en her caress can not smother What thou hast done. Follow the trail of the westering sun Over the earth. Thy light and his were as one-- Sun, in thy worth. Unto a nation whose sky was as night, Camest thou, holily, bearing thy light: And the dawn came, In it thy fame Flashed up in a flame. Back to the breast of thy mother-- To rest. Long hast thou striven; Dared where the hills by the lightning of heaven were riven; Go now, pure shriven. Who shall come after thee, out of the clay-- Learned one and leader to show us the way? Who shall rise up when the world gives the test? Think thou no more of this-- Rest! WHEN ALL IS DONE When all is done, and my last word is said, And ye who loved me murmur, "He is dead," Let no one weep, for fear that I should know, And sorrow too that ye should sorrow so. When all is done and in the oozing clay, Ye lay this cast-off hull of mine away, Pray not for me, for, after long despair, The quiet of the grave will be a prayer. For I have suffered loss and grievous pain, The hurts of hatred and the world's disdain, And wounds so deep that love, well-tried and pure, Had not the pow'r to ease them or to cure. When all is done, say not my day is o'er, And that thro' night I seek a dimmer shore: Say rather that my morn has just begun,-- I greet the dawn and not a setting sun, When all is done. THE POET AND THE BABY How's a man to write a sonnet, can you tell,-- How's he going to weave the dim, poetic spell,-- When a-toddling on the floor Is the muse he must adore, And this muse he loves, not wisely, but too well?