In silence, solitude and stern surmise His faith was tried and proved commensurate With life and death. The stone-blind eyes of Fate Perpetually stared into his eyes, Yet to the hazard of the enterprise He brought his soul, expectant and elate, And challenged, like a champion at the Gate, Death's undissuadable austerities. And thus, full-armed in all that Truth reprieves From dissolution, he beheld the breath Of daybreak flush his thought's exalted ways, While, like Dodona's sad, prophetic leaves, Round him the scant, supreme, momentous days Trembled and murmured in the wind of Death. II There moved a Presence always by his side, With eyes of pleasure and passion and wild tears, And on her lips the murmur of many years, And in her hair the chaplets of a bride; And with him, hour by hour, came one beside, Scatheless of Time and Time's vicissitude, Whose lips, perforce of endless solitude, Were silent and whose eyes were blind and wide. But when he died came One who wore a wreath Of star-light, and with fingers calm and bland Smoothed from his brows the trace of mortal pain; And of the two who stood on either hand, "This one is Life," he said, "And this is Death, And I am Love and Lord over these twain!" Sentence. [Witter Bynner] Shall I say that what heaven gave Earth has taken? -- Or that sleepers in the grave Reawaken? One sole sentence can I know, Can I say: You, my comrade, had to go, I to stay. Comrades. [George Edward Woodberry] Where are the friends that I knew in my Maying, In the days of my youth, in the first of my roaming? We were dear; we were leal; O, far we went straying; Now never a heart to my heart comes homing! -- Where is he now, the dark boy slender Who taught me bare-back, stirrup and reins? I loved him; he loved me; my beautiful, tender Tamer of horses on grass-grown plains. Where is he now whose eyes swam brighter, Softer than love, in his turbulent charms; Who taught me to strike, and to fall, dear fighter, And gathered me up in his boyhood arms; Taught me the rifle, and with me went riding, Suppled my limbs to the horseman's war; Where is he now, for whom my heart's biding, Biding, biding -- but he rides far! O love that passes the love of woman! Who that hath felt it shall ever forget, When the breath of life with a throb turns human, And a lad's heart is to a lad's heart set? Ever, forever, lover and rover -- They shall cling, nor each from other shall part Till the reign of the stars in the heavens be over, And life is dust in each faithful heart! They are dead, the American grasses under; There is no one now who presses my side; By the African chotts I am riding asunder, And with great joy ride I the last great ride. I am fey; I am fain of sudden dying; Thousands of miles there is no one near; And my heart -- all the night it is crying, crying In the bosoms of dead lads darling-dear.