Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/30

 To cast them on earth's coasts in varied play

Of colour and of movement and display.

Ay, and the life that ebbed from these uncounted slain

Shall from its hidden cisterns flow again.

The light that faded from their eyes,

The strength that left their limbs,

Gathers somewhere again to pour

Upon earth's conscious shore.

The oil whose flame now dims

Comes flooding back from reservoirs beyond our awed surmise.

There shall be resurrection for the crucified!

And these who died

Clutching with bony fingers the cadaverous earth

Shall wake the eternal bounty past the gates of death

And rise again upborne on some insurgent breath,

Some outburst of celestial mirth

Commensurate to this dearth.

Their passion groping at the doors of life

And feeling up the ways of day

Shall find its utterance once again in clay;

And we who still conduct earth's play and strife

Under the sun

Shall be upborne on tempests from their oblivion

And through us they shall speak

In tones stentorian now where they before were weak:

Saying, Let no soul stand aloof;

But cords of love bind human heart to heart

Across all barriers, lest the warp and woof

Of mortal life in time

Disjoin, and the woven fabric fall apart,

Marring the pattern of the timeless art,

The hieroglyph sublime.

Yet all its strands

Even those that run out to the great unknown

Are gathered in His hands 24