Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/298

270 Distort in body, starved in soul and mind;

Ah, not for them the good man's bitter scorn!

He, only, is the despicable one

Who lightly sells his honor as a shield

For fawning knaves, to hide them from the sun;

Too nice for crime, yet, coward, he doth yield

For crime a shelter. Swift to Paradise

The contrite thief, not Judas with his price!

THE HEROIC AGE

speaks not well who doth his time deplore,

Naming it new and little and obscure,

Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds.

All times were modern in the time of them,

And this no more than others. Do thy part

Here in the living day, as did the great

Who made old days immortal! So shall men,

Gazing long back to this far-looming hour,

Say: "Then the time when men were truly men:

Tho' wars grew less, their spirits met the test

Of new conditions; conquering civic wrong;

Saving the state anew by virtuous lives;

Guarding the country's honor as their own,

And their own as their country's and their sons':

Proclaiming service the one test of worth;

Defying leaguèd fraud with single truth;

Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause

Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man;

Not fearing loss; and daring to be pure.

When error through the land raged like a pest

They calmed the madness caught from mind to mind

By wisdom drawn from eld, and counsel sane;

And as the martyrs of the ancient world