Side by side with my soldiers thrown.

Dear old comrades of wars gone by,
Come, 'tis our final "halt" is nigh:
Clasp your brave hearts to my own.

A sheet for me--a sheet--and why?
Such is for them on their beds who moan:
The field is the soldier's place to die,
The field of carnage, of blood and bone.

Dear old comrades of wars gone by,
This is the prayer of my soul's last sigh:
Clasp your brave hearts to my own.

Tears for me--these tears--and why?
Knells let the vanquished foe intone!
France delivered!--I still can cry,
France delivered--invaders flown!

Dear old comrades of wars gone by,
Pain is nothing, and death--a lie!
Clasp your brave hearts to my own!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas
Walsh.

RENE DESCARTES

(1596-1650)

[Illustration: RENE DESCARTES.]

The broad scope of literature is illustrated by its inclusion of the
writings of Rene Descartes (Latinized, Renatus Cartesius). Deliberately
turning away from books, and making naught alike of learned precedent
and literary form, he yet could not but avail himself unconsciously of
the heritage which he had discarded.

This notable figure in seventeenth-century philosophy was born of
ancient family at La Haye, in Touraine, France, March 31st, 1596; and
died at Stockholm, Sweden, February 11th, 1650. From a pleasant student
life of eight years in the Jesuit college at La Fleche, he went forth in
his seventeenth year with unusual acquirements in mathematics and
languages, but in deep dissatisfaction with the long dominant scholastic
philosophy and the whole method prescribed for arriving at truth. In a
strong youthful revolt, his first step was a decision to discharge his
mind of all the prejudices into which his education had trained his
thinking. As a beginning in this work he went to Paris, for observation
of facts and of men. There, having drifted through a twelvemonth of
moderate dissipation, he secluded himself for nearly two years of
mathematical study, as though purposing to reduce his universe to an
equation in order to solve it. The laws of number he could trust, since
their lines configured the eternal harmony.

At the age of twenty-one he entered on a military service of two years
in the army of the Netherlands, and then of about two years in the
Bavarian army. From 1621, for about four yea