And the tune's getting louder--"The boys aren't dead!"
Cleora! That voice--it is Robert!--O, Lord!
I have leaned on Thy promise, and trusted Thy word,
And out of the midst of great darkness and night
Thy mercy has led me again to the light!

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES!

(UNDER THIS SIGN THOU SHALT CONQUER.)

Beneath the solemn stars that light
The dread infinitudes of night,
Mid wintry solitudes that lie
Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre
Reddens an awful space of sky
With Thor's eternal altar fire!
Worn with the fever of unrest,
And spent with years of eager quest,
Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood,
Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth,
The seekers of the Hidden Good,
The searchers for Eternal Truth!

From fiery Afric's burning sands,
From Asia's hoary templed lands,
From the pale borders of the North,
From the far South--the fruitful West,
O, long ago each journeyed forth,
Led hither by one glorious quest!
And each, with pilgrim staff and shoon,
Bore on his scrip a mystic rune,
Some maxim of his chosen creed,
By which, with swerveless rule and line,
He shaped his life in word and deed
To ends heroic and divine!

Around their dreary winter world
The great ice-kraken dimly curled
The white seas of the frozen zone;
And like a mighty lifted shield
The hollow heavens forever shone
On gleaming fiord and pathless field!
Behind them, in the nether deep,
The central fires, that never sleep,
Grappled and rose, and fell again;
And with colossal shock and throe
The shuddering mountain rent in twain
Her garments of perpetual snow!

Then Aba Seyd, grave-eyed and grand,
Stood forth with lifted brow and hand;
Kingly of height, of mien sublime,
Like glorious Saul among his peers,
With matchless wisdom for all time
Gleaned from the treasure house of years;
His locks rose like an eagle's crest,
His gray beard stormed on cheek and breast,
His silvery voice sonorous rang,
As when, exulting in the fray,
Where lances hissed and trumpets sang,
He held the Bedouin hordes at bay.

"Lo! Here we part: henceforth alone
We journey to the goal unknown;
But whatsoever paths we find,
The ties of fellowship shall bind
Our constant souls; and soon or late--
We laboring still in harmony--
The grand results for which we wait
Shall crown the mighty years to be!
Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset,
We grope in twilight darkness yet,
We who would found the age of gold,
Based on the uni