Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/190

POEMS OF OCCASION Tanned by what sun or exiled from what shore,

Hears in his soul the high command,—Be Free!

For him who, at the parting of the ways,

Disdained the flowery path, and gave

His succor to the hunted Afric slave,

Whose cause he chose nor feared the world's dispraise;

Yet found anon the right become the might,

And, in the long revenge of time,

Lived to renown and hoary years sublime.

Ye know him now, your beacon-light!

Ay, he was fronted like a tower,—

In thought large-moulded, as of frame;

He that, in the supreme hour,

Sat brooding at the river-heads of power

With sovereign strength for every need that came!

Not for that blameless one the place

That opens wide to men of lesser race;—

Even as of old the votes are given,

And Aristides is from Athens driven;

But for our statesmen, in his grander trust

No less the undefiled, The Just,—

With poesy and learning lightly worn,

And knees that bent to Heaven night and morn,—

For him that sacred, unimpassioned seat,

Where right and wrong for stainless judgment meet

Above the greed, the strife, the party call.—

Henceforth let 's robes on no base shoulders fall!

IX

ATLANTIS SURGENS

Well may your hearts be valiant,—ye who stand

Within that glory from the past,

And see how ripe the time, how fair the land

In which your lot is cast!

For us alone your sorrow,

Ye children of the morrow,— 160