Classic Poem

In the old time gone, ere came the dawn
To the ages dark and dim,
Who wielded the sword with mightiest brawn
The world bowed down to him;
The hand most red with the slaughtered dead
Most potent waved command,
And Mars from the sky of glory shed
His light like a blazing brand.
But fiery Mars among the stars
Grew pale and paler when,
At the morn, came Venus ushering in
The Heroes of the Pen.

Not with sword and flame these heroes came,
To ravage and to slay,
But the savage soul with thought to tame
And with love and reason sway;
Nor good steel wrought that battles fought
In the centuries of yore
Was ever so bright as they burnished thought
To cut into error's core;
And in the fight for truth and right
Not a hundred thousand men
Of the heroes old were match for one
Of the Heroes of the Pen.

For the weapon they wield nor armor nor shield
Endures for a single dint,
Nor glave withstands, nor bayonet steeled,
Nor powder and ball and flint.
It touches the thing called Slave or King,
And the Man doth reappear,
As did from the toad the seraph spring
At the touch of Ithuriel's spear;
And wherever down it strikes a crown,
Says sovereign to serf, ‘Amen!’
‘Amen and hurra,’ the people cry,
‘For the Heroes of the Pen!’

Hurra for the true, of old or new,
Who heroes lived or fell!
Thermopylæ's immortal few!
Hurra for the Switzer Tell!
Upvoice to sky the brave Gracchi!
Hurra for the Pole and the Hun!
For the men who made the Great July!
Hurra for Washington!
Yet old Time-Past would triumph at last—
But hurra, and hurra again,
For the heroes who triumph over Time,
The Heroes of the Pen!