And father, mother, wife, and friend
Forgot their country in their bale.

And Philip, with his fatal wound,
Was borne beyond the battle's blaze,
Across the torn and quaking ground,--
His ear too dull to heed the praise,
That spoke him hero, robed and crowned.

They bent above his blackened face,
And questioned of his last desire;
And with his old, familiar grace,
And smiling mouth, and eye of fire,
He answered them: "My wife's embrace!"

They wiped his forehead of its stain,
They bore him tenderly away,
Through teeming mart and wide champaign,
Till on a twilighty cool and gray,
And wet with weeping of the rain,

They gave him to a silent crowd
That waited at the river's marge,
Of men with age and sorrow bowed,
Who raised and bore their precious charge,
Through groups that watched and wailed aloud.



XXVI.