Explore "The Unseen Comrades" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Last night I saw an armed band, whose feet / Did take the martial step, although they trod / Soundless as waves of light upon the air. / (Silent from silent lips the bugle fell.) / The wind was wild; but the great flag they bore, / Hung motionless, and glittered like a god / Above their awful faces while they marched. / And when I saw, I understood and said -- / "If these are they whom we did love, and give, / What seek they? " But one sternly answered me, -- / "We seek our comrades whom we left to thee: / The weak, who were thy strength; the poor, who had / Thy pride; the faint and few who gave to thee / One supreme hour from out the day of life, / One deed majestic to their century. / These were thy trust: how fare they at thy hands? / Thy saviors then -- are they thy heroes now? / Our comrades still; we keep the step with them, / _Behold! As thou unto the least of them / Shalt do, so dost thou unto us. Amen._"
[1] Written for the benefit of the Soldiers' Home at Chelsea, / Massachusetts.