Page:The Book of the Homeless (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916).djvu/184

 themselves, despairing, resign out of sheer love of life; out of craving for what they have found too mutilated and starved, out of yearning for their meed of joy cruelly frustrated. And they who die that others may live are but those in whom the life-flame burns so hot and bright that they can feel the life and the longing to live in others as if it were their own—more than their own. Yea, life carries with it a very passion for existence.

To what then shall we turn that we may keep sane, watching this harvest of too young deaths, the harvest of the brave, whose stocks are raised before us, casting each its shadow in the ironic moonlight? Green corn! Green corn!

If, having watched those unripe blades reaped off and stacked so pitifully, watched the great dark Waggoner clear those unmellowed fields, we let their sacrifice be vain; if we sow not, hereafter, in a peaceful Earth that which shall become harvest more golden than the world has seen—then Shame on us, unending, in whatever land we dwell. …

This harvest night is still. And yet, up there, the bright angels are passing over the moon. One Star!