Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/192

POEMS OF OCCASION THE OLD ADMIRAL

at last,

That brave old hero of the Past!

His spirit has a second birth,

An unknown, grander life;—

All of him that was earth

Lies mute and cold,

Like a wrinkled sheath and old

Thrown off forever from the shimmering blade

That has good entrance made

Upon some distant, glorious strife.

From another generation,

A simpler age, to ours Old Ironsides came;

The morn and noontide of the nation

Alike he knew, nor yet outlived his fame,—

O, not outlived his fame!

The dauntless men whose service guards our shore

Lengthen still their glory-roll

With his name to lead the scroll,

As a flagship at her fore

Carries the Union, with its azure and the stars,

Symbol of times that are no more

And the old heroic wars.

He was the one

Whom Death had spared alone

Of all the captains of that lusty age,

Who sought the foeman where he lay,

On sea or sheltering bay,

Nor till the prize was theirs repressed their rage.

They are gone,—all gone:

They rest with glory and the undying Powers;

Only their name and fame and what they saved are ours!

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