Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/113

  Where will you find a shield when life has fled, When from feeble hands the sword drops to the ground? When the flowers you would wreathe about your head, Will grow in ridicule upon your mound?

Why flaunt you then before my aching head Love’s blood-stained rose, held boldly in your hand? Why all this flame? I would seek a tear instead And be content with a lowly amaranth.

Three horsemen rode where the aged oak trees spread, Rode through the marshes, dark clouds overhead. The crimson sunset, tinged the skies aglow While the first man spoke his woe in accents slow.

“Never before have I so feared the fray But I’ve left my sister home alone today. She is so young, oh endless grief and woes, If she should fall into some stranger’s throes.”

Another cloud sped ’cross the heaven’s bleak, And the second horseman thus began to speak:

“A sister’s grieving heart will cease to bleed, Soon as she hears her lover’s pawing steed. I am worse off I left my wife at home, I dread to think of her, as thus I roam. And children too my heart is torn apart, One in her arms, another beneath her heart. As bitter as the fruits the hawthornes bear Are children raised without paternal care.”

’Twas not the wind that ’twixt the mountains stole, But the weeping of the third man’s tortured soul.

“I dare say, sister, wife, ’tis hard to bear, But I was forced to leave my mother there. Poor aged mother, she is so weak and bent, Like the willows that along the brook lament. Her eyes will weep ’till there’ll be tears no more, For I have never left my home before. ’Mid tears I think of her with every breath, Who’ll close her eyes when she is called by Death?”