C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Lloyd Mifflin (1846–1921)

O SOLDIER, treading through the long day’s heat,

With tattered banner and with drooping crest,—

Now as the sun sinks down thy purpled West,

Thou who hast come so far with aching feet,

Thou who must march and never canst retreat,

Art thou not weary of the bootless quest?

Look’st thou not forward to a time of rest?

Sweet will it be—beyond all telling sweet—

After long marches with red danger fraught,

The wakeful bivouac, the assault and flight—

After thy scars of glory; sore distraught—

To camp afar, beyond defeat and fight,

Wrapped in the blanket of a dreamless night,

Out past the pickets and the tents of thought!