Battled with cold and famine,
    Battled with fiery heat,
    Battled o’er rocks till a trail of blood
    Was left by their wounded feet;
    Battled when death with his icy hand
    Struck down the body of Gray;—­
    ‘Onward!’ they said, as they buried the dead,
    And went on their gloomy way.

    Now gather round your household hearths,
    Your children by your knee;
    ’Tis well that they should understand
    This tale of misery. 
    ’Tis well that they should know the names
    Of those whose toil is o’er;
    Whose coming feet, we shall run to meet
    With a welcome never more.

    Tell how these modern martyrs,
    In the strength and pride of men,
    Went out into the wilderness
    And came not back again;
    How they battled bravely onward,
    For a nobler prize than thrones,
    And how they lay, in the glaring day,
    With the sun to bleach their bones.

    Tell how their poor hearts held them up
    Till victory was won;
    How with fainting steps they journeyed back,
    The great achievement done. 
    But of their anguish who may know,
    Save God, who heard each groan,
    When they saw no face at the trysting place,
    And found themselves alone!

    Left alone with gaunt starvation,
    And its sickly brood of ills,
    Stood Burke the sanguine, hopeful King,
    And the hero-hearted Wills;
    Sad and weary stood the pioneers,
    With no hand to give relief,
    And so each day winged on its way
    As a dark embodied grief.

    Who can guess the depth of agony—­
    That no mortal tongue may tell—­
    Which each felt when slowly dying
    At the brink of hope’s dry well! 
    Deserted, famished garmentless,
    No voice of friendship nigh,
    With loving care, to breathe a prayer
    When they settled down to die.

    Yet God be praised, that one dear life
    Was held within His hand,
    And saved, the only rescued one
    Of that devoted band
    Who went into the wilderness,
    In the strength and pride of men: 
    The goal was won and their task was done,
    But they came not back again.

    We cannot break their calm, grand sleep,
    By fond endearing cries;
    We cannot smile them back again,
    However bright our eyes;
    But we may lowly bend the head,
    Though not asham’d of the tears
    We sadly shed, for the lowly dead,
    Cut down in their bloom of years.

    And laurel garlands, greener
    Than war’s heroes ever bought
    With the blood of slaughtered thousands,
    Shall by loving hands be brought;
    And sanctified by many prayers,
    Laid gently in their grave,
    That the coming race may know the place
    Where sleep our martyr’d brave.