Classic Poem

I.

They were all alone, two brothers,
By a feeble, flickering light,
In an empty, wayside hovel,
At the ghostly hour of night.

Two soldiers, and one was dying
In his blanket on the floor,
With his knapsack for a pillow
His knapsack stained with gore.

The shadows crept to the hearthstone,
And hung round the broken wall:
And the dying man kept breathing —
Kept breathing, and that was all.

II.

Nay, his hand was feebly lifted,
And his white lips whispered low,
" I am watching, watching, brother,
As I told you long ago. "

For, in dying, he remembered
Once, when life was bright and sweet,
He had said: " I will watch the moment
When my pulses cease to beat.

" I will watch the last sensation
By the power of human will,
When the shadow falls around me
And my human heart grows still. "

III.

A bird in a blasted pine tree
Complained, like a heart that grieves;
The wind sighed low at the casement
And whispered around the eaves.

And the bright young life kept ebbing
From the heart so true and brave,
And the feeble breath grew fainter
On every pulsing wave.

But again the white lips parted,
And mutely seemed to say
" I am watching, watching, brother! "
And the brave soul passed away.

He had met the silent angel,
And together, hand in hand,
They had left the path of earth-life
For the far-off " better land. "

IV.

The night without grew darker,
The light within burnt low,
And the heart of the lonely mourner
Kept time to his weary woe.

As there in the awful silence,
Kneeling by that lowly bed,
He folded the cold hands fondly,
And kept vigil by his dead.

He had stood in front of battle —
He had seen his comrades slain,
Where the very earth was drunken
With a fall of crimson rain;

Had looked on the pallid faces
Of torn and mangled men,
But the hardest, bitterest trial
Of life was reserved till then.