Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

On the Defeat of a Great Man

By William Wilberforce Lord (1819–1907)

FALLEN! How fallen! States and empires fall;

O’er towers and rock-built walls,

And perished nations, floods to tempests call

With hollow sound along the sea of time:

The great man never falls,—

He lives, he towers aloft, he stands sublime;

They fall who give him not

The honor here that suits his future name,—

They die and are forgot.

O Giant loud and blind! the great man’s fame

Is his own shadow, and not cast by thee:

A shadow that shall grow

As down the heaven of time the sun descends,

And on the world shall throw

His godlike image, till it sinks where blends

Time’s dim horizon with Eternity.