his, and his study of everything new, he would paint pictures as he
sang, though unseen."

"Yes," said another; "but David--" And he paused.

"But David?" asked the chief.

"I was going to say that he might be blind, deaf, imprisoned, exiled,
sick, or all alone, and that yet he would never know he was alone;
feeling as he does, as he must to sing so, of the presence of this Lord
of his!"

"He does not think of a snow-flake, but as sent from him."

"While the snow-flake is reminding Homer of that hard, worrying,
slinging work of battle. He must have seen fight himself."

They were hushed again. For, though they no longer dared ask the poets
to sing to them,--so engrossed were they in each other's society,--the
soldiers were hardly losers from this modest courtesy. For the poets
were constantly arousing each other to strike a chord, or to sing some
snatch of remembered song. And so it was that Homer, _àpropos_ of I do
not know what, sang in a sad tone:--

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise.
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those have passed away."[D]