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Ah, how our hearts leapt forth to you,
In pride and joy, when you prevailed,
And when you died, serene and true:
-We wept in silence when you failed!

Oh, brain, that did not gain the gold!
Oh, arm, that could not wield the sword,
Here is the love, that is not sold,

Here are the hearts to hail you

Lord!

You played and lost the game? What then?
The rules are harsh and hard, we know;
You, still, oh, brothers, are the men

Whom we in secret reverence so.

Your work was waste? Maybe your share
Lay in the hour you laughed and kissed;
Who knows but that your son shall wear
The laurels that his father missed?

Ay, you who win, and you who lose,
Whether you triumph, or despair,-
When your returning footsteps choose

The homeward track, our love is there,
For, since the world is ordered thus,

To you, the fame, the stress, the sword, We can but wait, until to us

You give yourselves, for our reward.

To Whaler's deck and Coral beach,
To lonely Ranch and Frontier-Fort,
Beyond the narrow bounds of speech
I lay the cable of my thought.
I fain would send my thanks to you,
(Though who am I, to give you praise?)
Since what you are, and work you do
Are lessons for our easier ways.

'Neath alien stars your camp-fires glow,
I know you not, your tents are far,
My hope is but in song to show

How honored and how dear you are,

Laurence Hope [? -1904]

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Though out of the past they gather,
Mind's Doubt and Bodily Pain,
And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain,

And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
and ringleted Vain Desires,
And Vice with the spoils upon him
Of thee and thy beaten sires,―

While Kings of eternal evil
et darken the hills about,
hy part is with broken saber
To rise on the last redoubt;

"To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,

Die, driven against the wall!"
Louise Imogen Guiney [1861-

FAILURES

THEY bear no laurels on their sunless brows,
Nor aught within their pale hands as they go;
They look as men accustomed to the slow
And level onward course 'neath drooping boughs.
Who may these be no trumpet doth arouse,
These of the dark processionals of woe,

Unpraised, unblamed, but whom sad Acheron's flow Monotonously lulls to leaden drowse?

These are the Failures. Clutched by Circumstance,
They were-say not too weak!-too ready prey
To their own fear whose fixèd Gorgon glance

Made them as stone for aught of great essay;-
Or else they nodded when their Master-Chance
Wound his one signal, and went on his way.

Arthur Upson (1877-1908]

THE MEN OF OLD

I KNOW not that the men of old
Were better than men now,

Of heart more kind, of hand more bold,

Of more ingenuous brow:

I heed not those who pine for force

A ghost of Time to raise,

As if they thus could check the course

Of these appointed days.

Still it is true, and over-true,

That I delight to close

This book of life self-wise and new,

And let my thoughts repose

The Men of Old

all that humble happiness,
he world has since foregone,—
daylight of contentedness
hat on those faces shone!

h rights, though not too closely scanned, njoyed, as far as known,-

h will by no reverse unmanned,—

With pulse of even tone,

y from to-day and from to-night xpected nothing more,

n yesterday and yesternight ad proffered them before.

them was life a simple art f duties to be done,

ame where each man took his part, race where all must run;

attle whose great scheme and scope

They little cared to know,

tent, as men at arms, to cope

-ach with his fronting foe.

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at thoughts, great feelings, came to them,

ike instincts, unawares:

nding their souls' sublimest needs

With tasks of every day,

y went about their gravest deeds, s noble boys at play.—

what if Nature's fearful wound hey did not probe and bare, that their spirits never swooned o watch the misery there,

that their love but flowed more fast, heir charities more free,

conscious what mere drops they cast to the evil sea.

A man's best things are nearest him,

Lie close about his feet;

It is the distant and the dim

That we are sick to greet;

For flowers that grow our hands beneath
We struggle and aspire.-

Our hearts must die, except they breathe
The air of fresh Desire.

Yet, Brothers, who up Reason's hill
Advance with hopeful cheer,-
Oh! loiter not, those heights are chill,
As chill as they are clear;

And still restrain your haughty gaze,
The loftier that ye go,

Remembering distance leaves a haze

On all that lies below.

Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885]

DON QUIXOTE

BEHIND thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro,
Thy long spear leveled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack!
To make Wiseacredom, both high and low,
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go),
Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track:
Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possessed!
Yet would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill,
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah! would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest-were it but a mill.

Austin Dobson [1840

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