Page:Pieces People Ask For.djvu/65

Rh Close in his arms he held her: the morrow
 * Would bring to their fond hearts parting and pain,—

After love's rapture, bitterest sorrow;
 * After May sunshine, gloom and the rain.

The country her sons to save her was calling:
 * He answered her summons, fearless and brave;

On to the front, where heroes were falling,
 * Love and all of life's promise he gave.

She by the hearth, through long hours slow measure,
 * Watched and yearned, and suffered and prayed;

Read o'er his letters, lovingly treasured,
 * Hoped his return, — to hope, half afraid.

"God is good," she said. "His love will infold him,
 * Protect him, and bring him safe to me again;

I shall hear him once more, in rapture behold him,—
 * Oh, blessed reward, for my waiting and pain!"

In camp, on the field, on marches long, weary,
 * Her face and her voice in his heart's inner shrine

He kept; they brightened his way when most dreary,
 * Lifted his life to the Life all divine.

He fell in the ranks, at awful Stone River,
 * Blood of our heroes made sacred that sod;

On battle's red tide his soul went out ever
 * Forward and upward, to meet with his God.

Worn, grown old, yet tenderly keeping,
 * Every May month, sad tryst with her dead,

She knows not where her darling is sleeping,
 * She lays no garlands on his low bed.

All soldiers' graves claim her love and her blessing:
 * She decks them with flowers made sacred by tears;

Love of her heart for her soldier expressing,
 * "Love that is stronger than death," through the years.

Soon in the land of unfading beauty,
 * He, faithful knight of valor and truth,

She, living martyr to country and duty,
 * Shall find the sweetness and love of their youth.