ring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves:
So, without sound of music,
Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain's crown
The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Beth-peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyry
Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion stalking
Still shuns that hallowed spot;
For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.

But, when the warrior dieth,
His comrades in the war,
With arms reversed and muffled drums,
Follow his funeral car;
They show the banners taken,
They tell his battles won,
And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute-gun.

Amid the noblest of the land
We lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honoured place,
With costly marble dressed,
In the great minster transept
Where lights like glories fall,
And the sweet choir sings, and the organ rings
Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the bravest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced, with his golden pen,
On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honour,--
The hillside for his pall;
To lie in state, while angels wait,
With stars for tapers tall;
And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave;
And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave;--

In that strange grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay
Shall break again--O wondrous thought!--
Before the judgment-day,
And stand, with glory wrapped around,
On the hills he never trod,
And speak of the strife that won our life
With the incarnate Son of God.

O lonely grave in Moab's land!
O dark Beth-peor's hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still:
God hath His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell;
He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep
Of him He loved so well.

Cecil Frances Alexander

THE CRUSADER AND THE SARACEN

As the Knight of the Couchant Leopard continued to fix his eyes
attentively on the yet distant cluster of palm trees, it seemed