Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/The Enviable Dead
THE ENVIABLE DEAD.
Why will the heart continually return
To those it companied in battle? Burn,
Insistent to recover and hold fast
Those whom it lost in that amazing past?
Why still be scenting out their memories,
And whining up the untracked way they took,
Half-hearted in the present, ill at ease
For their swift disappearance, slow to brook
Their high desertion? Why so loth to miss
The stairs they climbed into the courts of Fame,
Their greater battles and serener bliss,
Their newer ventures, sports, high-hearted games,
And comrade-covenants in new crusades,
And forays past the veil, and eager raids
Across forbidden borders, new surprise,
And new unguessed, cerulean ecstasies?
So some companion who has faced the trail
And topped the summits with his comrades oft,
But now condemned to halt within the vale,
Watches the gallant company aloft
Upon the towering hills pass out of sight
With mutual shout and dear encouragement,
And mourns their love eclipsed by new delight,
And longs to follow by the way they went.