Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/203

CORDA CONCORDIA Not when a hero falls

The sound a world appalls:

For while we plant his cross

There is a glory, even in the loss:

But when some craven heart

From honor dares to part,

Then, then, the groan, the blanching cheek,

And men in whispers speak,

Nor kith nor country dare reclaim

From the black depths his name.

Thou, wild young warrior, rest,

By all the prairie winds caressed!

Swift was thy dying pang;

Even as the war-cry rang

Thy deathless spirit mounted high

And sought Columbia's sky:—

There, to the northward far,

Shines a new star,

And from it blazes down

The light of thy renown!

CORDA CONCORDIA

11, 1881

sandalled footsteps fall,

Tablet and coronal

From the Cephissian grove have vanished long,

Yet in the sacred dale

Still bides the nightingale

Easing his ancient heart-break still with song;

Or is there some dim audience

Viewless to all save his unclouded sense?

173