Classic Poem

What is a man? Not ours to ask,
Not ours to make reply.
But from Southampton to the Clyde
Can Britain testify —
That they are men and more than men
Who know the way to die.
The little blue fox has seen it break apart from the riven floe,
The little blue fox of the Arctic waste that seeks its food in the snow;
On gale-gored beach and wave-washed cliff the bear has seen it reel,
The polar bear as it left its lair to hunt for the frozen seal,
The lone moose bull on some outcast cape has wondered to see it pass,
As it shuffled the snow off its feeding grounds and sought for the meagre grass.

The sealer scurried from out its track, and the frightened whaler fled,
For the derelict berg on the fishing seas is a thing of fear and dread.
'T was battered and worn by icy waves and swept by their madd'ning wrath,
And the Northern Lights came out at night to glare on its lonely path.
But ever and on 'neath the dusk and dawn to the southern seas it bore,
With the lean locked lands of the north astern and the trackless seas before.

Proudly she swung from the crowded pier, as the mooring chains ran free,
Virgin pure from the Belfast docks, to the olden trail of the sea.
As the music swelled from the fading beach, the pounding screws replied,
And the grey, lank waves went gliding by, an arm's reach overside.
Alas! for the joy of the lover and maid, alas! for the children gay —
The little blue fox on the Arctic waste is safer by far than they.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

West! and the English fields grew dim, and the coastwise lights shone clear.
Say, did they laugh on the crowded decks, and the doom so very near?
West! and the coastwise lights gave out, and the stars of heaven shone,
And the sailor watched through the midnight hour, aloof, apart, alone.

South! 'neath the sinister polar star the death-bearing berg went forth.
Oh! they who sail on herded seas should dread the Doom of the North.
May Heaven pity the sailor man, when the Northern Doom's abroad,
For the ship is built by the human hand, the berg by the hand of God.
The stars looked down from the lonely sky — as they looked on the polar snow
Where the bear had eaten the little blue fox it killed by the Arctic floe.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Say, was the joke in the stateroom heard, the laugh on the maiden's lips?
Lord of the waves! have pity on men who go down to the sea in ships.
Say, did the grimy stoker smile in the heat of the furnace breath?
We do not know, but this we know, he laughed in the face of Death.
Say, did the lover hurry and fret to come to his sweet-heart's side?
We only know, when the davits swung, he gallantly stood aside.
And some there were, whose life and work was much misunderstood,
But in the hour that tried their souls, we know their death was good.
And greater by far than deeds of war or right or a grand mistake
Is a life that is given in sacrifice for a child or a woman's sake.

What is a man? Not ours to ask ,
Nor yet to make reply.
But from Southampton to the Clyde
Can Britain testify
That they are men and more than men
Who know the way to die.