Our pity for the ignorant soldier slain
In reeking swaths before the cannonade;
For all the thoughtless ranks, by shell and blade
Strewn by the thousands on the sickening plain;
This is but cause for mitigable pain;
But, Oh, the dreadful movement retrograde!
Grief for the world's great thinkers unafraid, —
The decimation of the men of brain!
True heroes of the Kingdom of the Mind,
For loss of these the world with woe is fraught;
This vanguard of the millions; they who seek
Progress, and betterment of all mankind;
Who, eager on the Future's frontier peak,
With golden clarions sound the march of thought;