Classic Poem

He sits at last among his peers,
While we stand chilled with eyes grown dim
In looking over life's grey fields,
And feel the heart-light folded in.

O great soul! entered in to know
The fulness of the Central Life!
O giant leader of the race,
Who never with the world made strife,

But led it surely, grandly on,
Scaling clear heights with leap and bound,—
Then, beckoning with a strong man's hand,
He kept his way to higher ground!

No maudlin cry he gave the world,—
“Behold my grief, pity my pain;”
Strong as the breath of Alpine hills,
Sweet as the sound of summer rain,

The songs he gave us. Evermore
The deathless might of English speech
Shall sound their notes from shore to shore,
And to the coming nations teach

That it is nobler to endure,
And smother back the cry of pain—
Shall call us onward to the heights,
To press ahead and bear the strain.

He wore no caste-bound fetters here;
A man of men he proved his soul;
The mighty pulse within his words
Beat full and free above control.

The illumined fringes of his thoughts
Have set the world's face after him,
As one would follow clear flute notes
Heard in cool aisles of forests dim.

With loving face of child and friend
To look on as the last of earth,
God wrapt him in a robe of light,
And gave him strong immortal birth.

He looks again in the clear eyes
Of her, the love-dream of his youth,
The moonlit side of his great heart,
To whom he gave his manhood's truth.

Perfect conditions of new life
Are vibrant to his being there,—
Gone in to feel the wider thrill,
Gone in to breathe the purer air.