Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/186

158 Untouched, unwasted, tho' the crumbling clay

Lay wreckt and ruined! Ah, is it not so,

Dear poet-comrade, who from sight hast gone;

Is it not so that spirit hath a life

Death may not conquer? But, O dauntless one!

Still must we sorrow. Heavy is the strife

And thou not with us; thou of the old race

That with Jehovah parleyed, face to face.

THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER

PART IV

SHERIDAN

I

, like a child

That sinks in slumber mild,

No pain or troubled thought his well-earned peace to mar,

Sank into endless rest our thunderbolt of war.

II

Tho' his the power to smite

Quick as the lightning's light,—

His single arm an army, his very name a host,—

Not his the love of blood, the warrior's cruel boast.