Chapter I

The Grecians loved their soldier dead:
They prized the casket, though the pearl had fled.
When he who could be dangerous in the fight,
Had proved his soul's magnificence and might,
But--his poor body vanquished--with a sigh
Had laid him down upon the sands to die,
He vaulted 'mongst the nation's honored sons;
He was the love of all the living ones.
They rallied round a chief when fallen low,
To guard his numb flesh from a hostile blow.
"Rescue the dead!" was then the clarion cry;
"Rescue the dead, for we ourselves must die!"
So, oft they made, before the strife was done,
A dozen corpses more, to rescue one.
When that great agony of muscle, brain,
Heart, soul, tumultuous joy, and frantic pain,
Men call a battle, had been lost and won,
And it was told what side the gods were on,
And o'er the brows of which exhausted band
Proud Victory should press her jewelled hand,
Then from the conquered to the conquering came
A voice that made its way like tongues of flame,
And swift and chivalrous compliance bred:
"Give us a truce, that we may bury our dead!"
Six Grecian generals came from war one day,
All well esteemed, for gallant men were they;
But some one, pointing grimly at them, said,
"They on the field unburied left their dead."

Then popular rage rose in a fiery flood,
And curled about them, and licked up their blood.
Why did each one fall with dissevered head?
Because the Grecians loved their soldier dead!
A man came running from Thermopylæ,
And said, "'Tis done; they all were slain but me."
Why did his fellow-Spartans sneer and hiss,
Recoil from him, as from a leper's kiss,
And say, "Take back your blood, you craven drone,
And leave it where your comrades lost their own?"
It was because the unhappy man had sped
Away from death, and left his comrades dead.
The Grecian mother, with a tearless eye,
Sent her son warward, with this mandate high:
"Now be this shield your glory or your hearse!
With it you earn my blessing or my curse!
Rather your ashes flecked with sparks of fame,
Than your live body clad in robes of shame!"
Oh yes, the Grecians loved their soldier dead!
Whether beneath the grass-blade's dainty tread,
Or 'mid the funeral pyre's majestic blaze,
They glowed within the living's envied gaze!
Yet not like ours that Grecian love could be:
They did not love the living as do we!