I SEEwithin my spiritmystic walls,
And slender windows casting hallowed light
Along dim aisles where many a shadow falls
On text and trophy, effigy and tomb;
And here each youthful hero and old knight
Sleeps on his marble couch, while overhead
The tattered banners shed their bloom
Of glory o'er the dead.
Here, raised in brass or graved in stone,
And dated with the passing year,
Are namescompanions I have known,
Whose hands I clasped but yesterday,
Whose voices ring within my ear:
And friends of earlier epochs far away,
Whose spirits answer to my call
Of names familiar as my own,
Written upon this chapel wall.
How strange to find them here!
So soon, so early sanctified,
They lie within the nation's heart,
Calm, safe, those sacred tombs beside
Of earlier saints who kept the faith
And waged the battle of their life
As 'twere a part of that celestial strife
That makes a gain of death.
Ah, we ourselves have slept,
And we, who but half knew them, find them here,
Where into light they stept,
Upon the signal that the Angel gave
Like him who now upon his passing bier
Moves into History. O blessed War,
That sends a blast of brightness from the grave
To show the souls of mortals as they are!
