"He looked forward to the mountains,
Back on foes that never spare,
Then flung him from his saddle,
And placed the stranger there.
"Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres,
Through a stormy hail of lead,
The good Thessalian charger
Up the slopes of olives sped.
"Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
He almost felt their breath,
Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down Between the hills and death.
"One brave and manful struggle-
He gained the solid land,
And the cover of the mountains,
And the carbines of his band!"
"It was very great and noble,"
Said the moist-eyed listener then,
"But one brave deed makes no hero;
Tell me what he since hath been!"
"Still a brave and generous manhood,
Still an honor without stain,
In the prison of the Kaiser,
By the barricades of Seine.
"But dream not helm and harness
The sign of valor true;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
"Wouldst know him now? Behold him,
The Cadmus of the blind,
Giving the dumb lip language,
The idiot clay a mind.
Walking his round of duty
Serenely day by day,
With the strong man's hand of labor
And childhood's heart of play.
"True as the knights of story,
Sir Lancelot and his peers,
Brave in his calm endurance
As they in tilt of spears.
"As waves in stillest waters,
As stars in noonday skies,
All that wakes to noble action
In his noon of calmness lies.
"Wherever outraged Nature
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave-
"Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever sink a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds An answer in his own.
"Knight of a better era,
Without reproach or fear!
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here?"
In my dream, methought I trod,
Yesternight, a mountain road;
Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
High as eagle's flight, it ran.
Overhead, a roof of cloud
With its weight of thunder bowed;
Underneath, to left and right,
Blankness and abysmal night.
Here and there a wild-flower blushed,
Now and then a bird-song gushed;
Now and then, through rifts of shade,
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played,
But the goodly company,
Walking in that path with me,
One by one the brink o'erslid,
One by one the darkness hid.
Some with wailing and lament,
Some with cheerful courage went;
But, of all who smiled or mourned,
Never one to us returned.
Anxiously, with eye and ear,
Questioning that shadow drear
Never hand in token stirred,
Never answering voice I heard!
Steeper, darker !-lo! I felt
From my feet the pathway melt.
Swallowed by the black despair,
And the hungry jaws of air,
Past the stony-throated caves,
Strangled by the wash of waves,
Past the splintered crags, I sank
On a green and flowery bank-
Soft as fall of thistle-down,
Lightly as a cloud is blown,
Soothingly as childhood pressed
To the bosom of its rest.
Of the sharp-horned rocks instead,
Green the grassy meadows spread,
Bright with waters singing by
Trees that propped a golden sky.
Painless, trustful, sorrow-free,
Old lost faces welcomed me,
With whose sweetness of content
Still expectant hope was blent.
Waking while the dawning gray
Slowly brightened into day,
Pondering that vision fled,
Thus unto myself I said:
Steep, and hung with clouds of strife, Is our narrow path of life;
And our death the dreaded fall
Through the dark, awaiting all.
"So, with painful steps we climb
Up the dizzy ways of time,
Ever in the shadow shed
By the forecast of our dread.
"Dread of mystery solved alone,
Of the untried and unknown;
Yet the end thereof may seem
Like the falling of my dream.
"And this heart-consuming care,
All our fears of here or there,
Change and absence, loss and death,
Prove but simple lack of faith."
Thou, O Most Compassionate!
Who didst stoop to our estate,
Drinking of the cup we drain,
Treading in our path of pain-
Through the doubt and mystery,
Grant to us thy steps to see,
And the grace to draw from thence
Larger hope and confidence.
Show thy vacant tomb, and let,
As of old, the angels sit,
Whispering, by its open door:
"Fear not! He hath
BLESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace:
From my heart I give thee joy—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art-the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy,
In the reach of ear and eye-
Outward sunshine, inward joy :
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
O, for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild-flower's time and place,
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