The best they have in early life they bring
A free-will offering to their God and King;
And in that hour when heart and flesh shall fail,
Their song of triumph ringing through the vale,
Will mingle with the anthems of the blest,
Who wait to hail them to their heavenly rest.
Would’st thou depart with that exulting cry
In glorious hope of immortality?
I read an answer in that beaming face,
Behold thy Saviour—fly to his embrace!
Strewn on the battle-plain,
After the fight was done,
And the bloody victory won,
Were a thousand heaps of slain.
Rider and horse there lay,
But the war-steed neighed no more,
And the gallant form he bore
Upon that eventful day,
Shattered, and marred, and ghastly pale,
Had fallen beneath the deadly hail.
Prince and peasant were there!
Rich and poor, master and slave,
Wise and simple, timid and brave;
Old men with snow-white hair,
Young men of noble birth,
Boys just from their native shore,
And the homes they shall see no more,
Stretched on the cold, damp
earth;
And mother and sister may watch in vain,
They never shall press those lips again.
Clasped in a fond embrace
Was a young and gentle pair,
And the love that was pictured there
Made holy that dreadful place.
Near by a chieftain bled,
While his faithful dog still kept
A mournful watch where he slept,
And mourned above the dead,
Then gazed on the pallid lips and brow:
It is death—does he comprehend it now?
Just as they fell they lay—
Struck down in the dreadful strife;
And the latest look they wore in life
Death had not taken away:
Some with a pleasant smile,
Foeman with foemen at peace,
Croat, and Frank, and Tyrolese,
All in one ghastly pile,
From the Seine, the Po, and the Land of Song,
Oh, where were the souls of that countless throng?
Gone to the bar of God!
Gone from the battle’s din,
Gone with their weight of sin,
To the solemn bar of God!
Woe to ambition and pride!
Woe to the tyrant king
Who dares from his subjects wring
What God has never denied!
Aye, woe to him, for the record stands,
And the blood of the slain is on his hands.
DEAD AND FORGOT.
Dead and forgot!
How sad the lot
When wintry tempests blow
To lie all cold
’Neath the churchyard
mould,
And in a year or so
To have our very name unsaid,
Unless it chance to fall
From careless lips that say, “She’s dead,”—
She’s dead, and that is all!
But sadder still
That one should fill
The place we thought our own:
That a form more light,
And an eye more bright
Should guard our dear hearth-stone;
That where we strayed another’s feet
At morn and eve should roam,
And another’s voice—perchance more
sweet—
Make music in our home!
