Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/302

274 What stays the noblest memory

For all his years to keep?

Not of the foemen slaughtered,

But rescued from the deep!

Rescued with peerless daring!

O, none shall forget that sight,

When the unaimed cannon thundered

In the ghastly after-fight.

And, now, in the breast of the hero

There blooms a strange, new flower,

A blood-red, fragrant blossom

Sown in the battle-hour.

'T is not the Love of Comrades,—

That flower forever blows,—

But the brave man's Love of Courage,

The Love of Comrade-Foes.

For since the beginning of battles

On the land and on the wave,

Heroes have answered to heroes,

The brave have honored the brave.

A VISION

round the glimmering circuit of the isle

Audibly pulsed the ocean. In the dark

Of the thick wood a voice not of its own

Might come to sharpened ears; a sound supprest,

The rustling of an armèd multitude

Who toss in sleep, or, wakening, watch for death.

Beneath the tropic stars that in strange skies

Drew close and glittered large, I saw in dream

A Soul pass hoveringly.