| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | The Great Adventure | | By Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) |
| | | ’TIS sweet to hear of heroes dead, | |
| To know them still alive; | |
| But sweeter if we earn their bread, | |
| And in us they survive. | |
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| Ye skies, drop gently round my breast | 5 |
| And be my corselet blue; | |
| Ye earth, receive my lance in rest, | |
| My faithful charger you: | |
| |
| Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, | |
| My arrow-tips ye are: | 10 |
| I see the routed foemen fly | |
| My bright spears fix’d [for war]. | |
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| Give me an angel for a foe! | |
| Fix now the place and time! | |
| And straight to meet him I will go | 15 |
| Above the starry chime: | |
| |
| And with our clashing bucklers’ clang | |
| The heavenly spheres shall ring, | |
| While bright the northern lights shall hang | |
| Beside our tourneying. | 20 |
| |
| And if she lose her champion true, | |
| Tell Heaven not to despair; | |
| For I will be her champion new, | |
| Her fame I will repair. | | | | |
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