Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/364

336 Failure of friend, and hope, and heart, and faith—

This last the deadliest, and holding all.

Help was there none through weeping, for the years

Had stolen all his treasury of tears.

Then on a page where his eyes chanced to fall

There sprang such words of courage that they seemed

Cries on a battlefield, or as one dreamed

Of trumpets sounding charges. On he read

With fixèd gaze, and sad, down-drooping head,

And curious, half-remembering, musing mind.

The ringing of that voice had something stirred

In his deep heart, like music long since heard.

"Brave words," he sighed; and looked where they were signed;

There, reading his own name, tears made him blind.

LOST

"WHAT MAN HATH DONE"

did he speak, thus was he comforted:

I yet shall learn to live ere I am dead;

I shall be firm of will, know false from true:

Each error will but show me how to do,