But never drought had broke them: never flood
Had quenched them: they with mighty youth and health,
And thews and sinews knotted like the trees --
~They~, like the children of the native woods,
Could stem the strenuous waters, or outlive
The crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirst
Like camels: yet of what avail was strength
Alone to them -- though it was like the rocks
On stormy mountains -- in the bloody time
When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest,
And violent darkness gripped the life in them
And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares
Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.
All murdered by the blacks; smit while they lay
In silver dreams, and with the far, faint fall
Of many waters breaking on their sleep!
Yea, in the tracts unknown of any man
Save savages -- the dim-discovered ways
Of footless silence or unhappy winds --
The wild men came upon them, like a fire
Of desert thunder; and the fine, firm lips
That touched a mother's lips a year before,
And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,
Were hewn -- a sacrifice before the stars,
And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,
And falling leaves and solitary wings!
Aye, you may see their graves -- you who have toiled
And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;
For, verily, I say that ~not~ so deep
Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust
Of gusty days will never leave them bare.
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