Classic Poem

(Wm. Restelle Shier)

His calmness was self-mastery;
His soul was like the blue expanse;
His word was a white light,
The strength of fourscore years
Compressed into this youth
Surged, not torrential,
But intense, serene and joyous,
Clear as the day and quiet as the stars.
His pen turned sable ink to sunshine
Focussed in beacon rays —
The light of comradeship.
His justice-loving soul
In great life-tides pressed joywards,
Holding the weakest child at the race-front
That princes, purple-robed, proud-born,
Should not come earlier to the goal.
He showed each comrade how to meet the foe
And make defeat impossible
Though fighting he should fall.

Some saviours bear perpetual martyrdom;
Some by their enemies are lifted up
To immortality. He, with too fragile frame,
Bore freedom's standard down the continent,
And fell unbowed amid the fight
To rest, high-throned in many hearts,
Wholesome of memory.