Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/97



HAT song is best for the soldiers? Take no heed of the words, nor choose you the style of the story; Let it burst out from the heart like a spring from the womb of a mountain, Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way to the levels; Whether of love or hate or war or the pathos and pain of affliction; Whether of manly pluck in the perilous hour, or that which is higher, And highest of all, the slowly bleeding sacrifice, The giving of life and its joys for the sake of men and freedom;—