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(Died Jan. 23, 1875)
MORTALS there are who seem, all over, flame, | |
| Vitalized radiance, keen, intense, and high, | |
| Whose souls, like planets in a dominant sky, | |
| Burn with full forces of eternity: | |
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| Such was his soul, and such the light which came | 5 |
| From that pure heaven he lived in; holiest worth | |
| Of will and work was his, to brighten earth, | |
| Heal its foul wounds, and beautify its dearth. | |
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| He dwelt in clear white purity apart, | |
| Yet walked the world; through many a sufferer’s door | 10 |
| He shone like morning; comfort streamed before | |
| His footsteps; on the feeble and the poor | |
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| He lavished the rich spikenard of his heart. | |
| Christ’s soldier! To his trumpet-call he sprung, | |
| Eager, elate; valiant of pen and tongue, | 15 |
| Grand were the words he spake, the songs he sung. | |
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| Still, hero-priest! born out of thy due time— | |
| Thou shouldst have lived when on thine England’s sod | |
| Giants of faith and seers of freedom trod, | |
| Daring all things to break the oppressor’s rod. | 20 |
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| Great in thine own age, thou hadst been sublime | |
| In theirs—that age of fervent, fruitful breath, | |
| When, scorning treachery, and defying death, | |
| Her true knights girt their loved Elizabeth, | |
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| Seeing on her the centuries’ hopes were set; | 25 |
| Then hadst thou ranged with Raleigh land and sea, | |
| Bible and sword in hand, gone forth with Leigh, | |
| The tyrant smote, the heathen folk made free! | |
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| Yea! but to God and grace thou hast paid thy debt, | |
| In measure scarce less glorious and complete | 30 |
| Than theirs who bearded on his chosen seat | |
| The bloody Antichrist; or fleet to fleet, | |
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| Thundered through storms of battle-wrack and fire | |
| At Britain’s Salamis; the heroic strain | |
| Ran purpling all thy nature like a vein | 35 |
| Oped from God’s heart to thine; the loftiest plane | |
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| Of thought and action, purpose and desire | |
| Thou trod’st on triumphing; thy Viking’s face | |
| Showed granite-willed, yet softened into grace | |
| By effluence of good deeds, the angelic race | 40 |
| Of prayers to prompt, and aid them! Fare thee well, | |
| Clear spirit and strong! thy life-work nobly done, | |
| Shines beautiful as some unsetting sun | |
| O’er Arctic summers; chords of victory run | |
| Even through the mournful boom of thy deep funeral knell! | 45 |
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