Happy their end
  Who vanish down life’s evening stream
  Placid as swans that drift in dream
    Round the next river-bend! 
Happy long life, with honor at the close,
Friends’ painless tears, the softened thought of foes! 
    And yet, like him, to spend
All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure
From mid-life’s doubt and eld’s contentment poor,
    What more could Fortune send? 50

    Right in the van,
  On the red rampart’s slippery swell,
With heart that beat a charge, he fell
    Foeward, as fits a man;
But the high soul burns on to light men’s feet
Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet;
    His life her crescent’s span
Orbs full with share in their undarkening days
Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise
    Since valor’s praise began. 60

III

    His life’s expense
  Hath won him coeternal youth
  With the immaculate prime of Truth;
    While we, who make pretence
At living on, and wake and eat and sleep,
And life’s stale trick by repetition keep,
    Our fickle permanence
(A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play
Of busy idlesse ceases with our day)
   Is the mere cheat of sense. 70

    We bide our chance,
  Unhappy, and make terms with Fate
  A little more to let us wait;
    He leads for aye the advance,
Hope’s forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good
For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood;
    Our wall of circumstance
  Cleared at a bound, he flashes o’er the fight,
  A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right
    And steel each wavering glance. 80

    I write of one,
  While with dim eyes I think of three;
  Who weeps not others fair and brave as he? 
    Ah, when the fight is won,
Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn,
(Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn,)
    How nobler shall the sun
Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air,
That thou bred’st children who for thee could dare
    And die as thine have done!

ON BOARD THE ’76

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT’S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

NOVEMBER 3, 1884

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea,
  Her rudder gone, her mainmast o’er the side;
Her scuppers, from the waves’ clutch staggering free,
  Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide;
Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn,
    We lay, awaiting morn.

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair;
  And she that bare the promise of the world. 
Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare,
  At random o’er the wildering waters hurled; 10
The reek of battle drifting slow alee
    Not sullener than we.