Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/225

Rh “Once, when over purple mountains
 * Died away the Grecian sun,

And the far Cyllenian ranges
 * Paled and darkened, one by one,—

“Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
 * Cleaving all the quiet sky,

And against his sharp steel lightnings
 * Stood the Suliote but to die.

“Woe for the weak and halting!
 * The crescent blazed behind

A curving line of sabres,
 * Like fire before the wind!

“Last to fly, and first to rally,
 * Rode he of whom I speak,

When, groaning in his bridle-path,
 * Sank down a wounded Greek.

“With the rich Albanian costume
 * Wet with many a ghastly stain,

Gazing on earth and sky as one
 * Who might not gaze again!

“He looked forward to the mountains,
 * Back on foes that never spare,

Then flung him from his saddle,
 * And placed the stranger there.

“ ‘Allah! hu!’ Through flashing sabres,
 * Through a stormy hail of lead,

The good Thessalian charger
 * Up the slopes of olives sped.

“Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
 * He almost felt their breath,

Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
 * Between the hills and death.

“One brave and manful struggle,—
 * He gained the solid land,

And the cover of the mountains,
 * And the carbines of his band!”

“It was very great and noble,”
 * Said the moist-eyed listener then,

“But one brave deed makes no hero;
 * Tell me what he since hath been!”

“Still a brave and generous manhood,
 * Still an honor without stain,

In the prison of the Kaiser,
 * By the barricades of Seine.

“But dream not helm and harness
 * The sign of valor true;

Peace hath higher tests of manhood
 * Than battle ever knew.

“Wouldst know him now? Behold him,
 * The Cadmus of the blind,

Giving the dumb lip language,
 * The idiot-clay a mind.

“Walking his round of duty
 * Serenely day by day,

With the strong man’s hand of labor
 * And childhood’s heart of play.

“True as the knights of story,
 * Sir Lancelot and his peers,

Brave in his calm endurance
 * As they in tilt of spears.

“As waves in stillest waters,
 * As stars in noonday skies,

All that wakes to noble action
 * In his noon of calmness lies.

“Wherever outraged Nature
 * Asks word or action brave,

Wherever struggles labor,
 * Wherever groans a slave,—

“Wherever rise the peoples,
 * Wherever sinks a throne,

The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
 * An answer in his own.

“Knight of a better era,
 * Without reproach or fear!

Said I not well that Bayards
 * And Sidneys still are here?”

day, along the electric wire
 * His manly word for Freedom sped;

We came next morn: that tongue of fire
 * Said only, “He who spake is dead!”

Dead! while his voice was living yet,
 * In echoes round the pillared dome!