Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/98

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92
A SONG FOR THE SOLDIERS.

Any song for the soldier that will harmonize with the life-throbs;
For he has laved in the mystical sea by which men are one;
His pulse has thrilled into blinding tune with the vaster anthems
Which God plays on the battle-fields when He sweeps the strings of nations,
And the song of the earth-planet bursts on the silent spheres,
Shot through like the cloud of Etna with flames of heroic devotion,
And shaded with quivering lines from the mourning of women and children!

Here is a song for the soldiers—a song of the Cheyenne Indians,
Of men with soldierly hearts who walked with Death as a comrade.