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(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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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; | 25 |
| 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. | 30 |
| |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| 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. | |
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