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Rh VALE—ATQUE SALVE

(As a second presidential term was ending)

(February 25, 1921)

BY M. A. DE WOLFE HOWE

figure disappears alone

Down the dark roadway of the overthrown;

Yet is there time ere fades the twilight chill

For one more volley! Hasten, ye who will,

To seize on stick and shard, and hurl them after

The bent wayfarer! All your taunting laughter

Will fall unanswered; naught will he hurl back

Who plods in silence down the fated track.

But let none save the perfect cast a stone!

We, the imperfect, see the doom foreknown

On them whose vision passes human deed,

Who, free themselves in spirit, would have freed

Mankind at one quick stroke from its old bonds

Of greed and self that still to self responds.

Yet, bred in imperfections, know we not

That, stumbling through the mists, the light forgot,

Sudden we see the clouds lift from our land,

And on its sun-lit heights again we stand!

Then shall our leader through the valleys shine

A mystic form, a name to intertwine