Classic Poem

He had come up from the ranks. He drove
A yoke of steers in the good old days
When Michigan all was a treasure trove
And men made money in various ways.
He watched his chance and he made his plays
And he worked at night till the stars were dim—
And presently people began to praise,
And even at last to envy him.

Now, that is the mark of a true success:
When you're doing well and the world is glad
You have partly won—but the thing, I guess,
Is to do so well that the world gets mad.
When the people talk of the luck you had
And begin to wink and to shake the head
And to hint of ways that were dark and bad,
Then you've won success—so he often said.

But he, 'way down in his heart, he knew
What success had cost, how success had come:
It came on the long trail to the Soo,
It came in the timber of the Thumb,
It came on nights when his legs were numb
With the wear of labor and hurt of cold,
When he asked the future, and found it dumb,
Where the highway lay to the land of gold.

But he worked and figured and fought and planned,
He watched his chance as a fighter must,
And he hammered fate with a good right hand
In the Winter snow, in the Summer dust;
And others might falter and others rust
But his will shone on like a shining sword,
With an endless hope and a tireless thrust,
As a yeoman fought for his ancient lord.

It put the wrinkles upon his brow,
It put the gray in his yellow hair,
It gave him a brand of his own, somehow,
That none of the envious ever wear.
For labor had written its record there
In his shoulders round and his fingers bent—
On his face had printed the stamp of care—
And something, too, of a great content.

There is something envy can never reach,
There is something envy can never touch
With its keenest word or its cruelest speech,
When a man has labored and suffered much.
For what are the idle words of such
By the glad approval of one's own soul?
Their words of envy to those who clutch
The thing they sought for, the golden goal?

He is walking down through the final years
(He passes silently on the way),
And the vale behind has been wet with tears
And the hills behind have been glad with day.
And do you think that the things we say,
The sneer of envy, the laugh of spite,
Could bow the head of the man of gray
That has held erect in the hardest fight?

For the thing we win in the war of life
It is not the gold, it is not the fame,
But the inner sense that through all the strife
Unchanged, unfaltering, still we came.
We have won our own, not the world's acclaim,
The thing we wanted to do have done;
And the world may praise or the world may blame—
But our own souls know we have worked, and won.