Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/86

IN WAR TIME Earthly sorrows manifold,

Sickness, failure of thine ends,

And the falling off of friends.

Treason, want, dishonor, wrong,

None of these shall harm thee long.

Every day a beam is made;

Hour by hour a stone is laid.

Back the cruellest shall fall

From the warder at the wall;

Foemen shall not dare to tread

On the ramparts o'er thy head;

Dark, triumphant flags shall wave

From the fastness of thy—Grave.

XVIII

1

's an hour, at the fall of night, when the blissful souls

Of those who were dear in life seem close at hand;

There 's a holy midnight hour, when we speak their names

In pauses between our songs on the trellised porch;

And we sing the hymns which they loved, and almost know

Their phantoms are somewhere with us, filling the gaps,

The sorrowful chasms left when they passed away;

And we seem, in the hush of our yearning voices, to hear

Their warm, familiar breathing somewhere near.

2

At such an hour,—when again the autumn haze

Silvered the moors, and the new moon peered from the west

Over the blue Passaic, and the mansion shone

Clear and white on the ridge which skirts the stream,—

At the twilight hour a man and a woman sat

On the open porch, in the garb of those who mourn. 56