Classic Poem

'T WAS revelation and transfiguration
Out of the heavens for him God's new elect.
Seeing he rose, believing he resolved.
No proffered wealth, nor ease, nor worldly state,
Not even retirement and tranquillity,
Could tempt his soul. Ever great strains he heard,
Calling and calling. He dared not refuse.
Henceforth he was to serve America —
Not with the sword, not with a host in arms,
But with his mind and with experience
Got off war's battlefields, and from ascents
Where knowledge turns to wisdom, faith to sight.

After great voices, academic doors
Swung open, seats of privilege stood forth,
Inviting holy aspirations blent
Into sweet harmonies within the soul.
As once he looked upon his marching troops
And led the young men of the South in war,
So now he gazed upon the Southern youth
With a new passion. He would be their head,
Their Captain still, but on the fields of peace,
To train them in the ways of fealty,
To teach, to guide, to show the pageants fair
That pass between the heavens and the earth —
Ideals of spirit, service nationward,
Virtue's exemplars, life's beatitudes,
The North and South in brotherhood conjoined,
The Constitution — freedom's Magna Charta;
The Stars and Stripes — symbol inviolate
Of Law and Liberty together throned
With Love, a Trinity invincible —
For sake of a redeemed America,
For true Democracy's increasing sons.