Classic Poem

ON THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE ANTINOË BY THE OFFICERS AND SAILORS OF THE ROOSEVELT, AND OF THE CREW OF THE FLORIDA SAVED BY THE SAME OFFICERS WITH A CREW FROM THE AMERICA

Now , what shall be the lasting meed
Of these, the heroes of the sea,
Who never guessed their casual deed
Had seed of immortality?

Not flowers, that speak a hundred tongues;
Not keys of cities; not acclaim
Of jostling crowds, whose shouting lungs
Make envious cowards thrill with shame;

Not banquets, where the shrinking brave
Are made more humble by our praise;
Not medals, that the worthless crave
And worthless, sought, as withered bays.

Needs something more the heroic race
To crown the sacrificial act,
Or else the largess of our grace
The final recompense had lacked.

Come, Memory, in the deepest plight
Of loss or danger that can be,
On every threatening wave indite
One word of hope: Antinoi .

*****

How could we know that they whose deed
Wrote a new legend for mankind
Would conquer twice the ocean's greed,
The winter and the hissing wind!

But in the bleak and fearful night —
When life seems nothing or seems all —
Their past became their future's might,
And danger was a festival.

'Tis in his choice the hero lives
While Fate stands by with poised dice:
The measure of his peril gives
The measure of his peril gives
The measure of his sacrifice.

In the famed heaven of mercy, where
The humble are the only great,
These shall exalted be and share
With those who simply stand and wait.

Crown them with double honor now
In brotherhood of land and sea,
Forgetting not to twine each brow
With memories of Calvary.