William Wilfred Campbell (1861–1918)

(To the memory of Henry Harper, drowned in the Ottawa

River, while trying to save Miss Blair)

WE crown the splendours of immortal peace,

And laud the heroes of ensanguined war,

Rearing in granite memory of men

Who build the future, recreate the past,

Or animate the present dull world’s pulse

With loftier riches of the human mind.

But his was greatness not of common mould,

And yet so human in its simple worth,

That any spirit plodding its slow round

Of social commonplace and daily moil,

Might blunder on such greatness, did he hold

In him the kernel sap from which it sprung.

Men in rare hours great actions may perform,

Heroic, lofty, whereof earth will ring,

A world onlooking, and the spirit strung

To high achievement at the cannon’s mouth,

Or where fierce ranks of maddened men go down.

But this was godlier. In the common round

Of life’s slow action, stumbling on the brink

Of sudden opportunity, he chose

The only noble, godlike, splendid way,

And made his exit, as earth’s great have gone,

By that vast doorway looking out on death.

No poet this of winged, immortal pen;

No hero of a hundred victories;

Nor iron moulder of unwieldy states,

Grave counsellor of parliaments, gold-tongued,

Standing in shadow of a centuried fame,

Drinking the splendid plaudits of a world.

But simple, unrecorded in his days,

Unostentatious, like the average man

Of average duty, walked the common earth,

And when fate flung her challenge in his face,

Took all his spirit in his blinded eyes,

And showed in action why God made the world.

He passes as all pass, both small and great,

Oblivion-clouded, to the common goal;—

And all unmindful moves the dull world round,

With baser dreams of this material day,

And all that makes man petty, the slow pace

Of small accomplishment that mocks the soul.

But he hath taught us by this splendid deed

That under all the brutish mask of life,

And dulled intention of ignoble ends,

Man’s soul is not all sordid; that behind

This tragedy of ills and hates that seem

There lurks a godlike impulse in the world,

And men are greater than they idly dream.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD