Page:Poems Larcom.djvu/230

Resisting not the wrong I see!
If none uphold me, I must go
   Singly against the foe!"

And not the warrior-heart alone
The scoffer's word for truth has known.
The mourner, weeping out the night
For aliens from the one. true Light;
The watcher by the bed of pain,
   Who knows her watch in vain;

He who has felt his heaviest cross
Far lighter than another's loss;
He who can ask and bear the blow
That shelters any soul from woe,
Sees why that Death on Calvary
   Life's beacon-light must be.

Ring, mournful echo, through the world!
Float, banner of the Cross, unfurled
To show the servant who would prove
His Master's joy of suffering love,
That, while thy folds above him wave,
   Himself he cannot save!