Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built,
By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be,
With the more potent music of our swords? 
Think’st thou that score of men beyond the sea
Claim more God’s care than all of England here? 
No; when He moves his arm, it is to aid 130
Whole peoples, heedless if a few be crushed,
As some are ever, when the destiny
Of man takes one stride onward nearer home. 
Believe me, ’tis the mass of men He loves;
And, where there is most sorrow and most want,
Where the high heart of man is trodden down
The most, ’tis not because He hides his face
From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate: 
Not so:  there most is He, for there is He
Most needed.  Men who seek for Fate abroad 140
Are not so near his heart as they who dare
Frankly to face her where she faces them,
On their own threshold, where their souls are strong
To grapple with and throw her; as I once,
Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king,
Who now has grown so dotard as to deem
That he can wrestle with an angry realm,
And throw the brawned Antaeus of men’s rights. 
No, Hampden! they have half-way conquered Fate
Who go half-way to meet her,—­as will I. 150
Freedom hath yet a work for me to do;
So speaks that inward voice which never yet
Spake falsely, when it urged the spirit on
To noble emprise for country and mankind. 
And, for success, I ask no more than this,—­
To bear unflinching witness to the truth. 
All true whole men succeed; for what is worth
Success’s name, unless it be the thought,
The inward surety, to have carried out
A noble purpose to a noble end, 160
Although it be the gallows or the block? 
’Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need
These outward shows of gain to bolster her. 
Be it we prove the weaker with our swords;
Truth only needs to be for once spoke out,
And there’s such music in her, such strange rhythm,
As makes men’s memories her joyous slaves,
And clings around the soul, as the sky clings
Round the mute earth, forever beautiful,
And, if o’erclouded, only to burst forth 170
More all-embracingly divine and clear: 
Get but the truth once uttered, and ’tis like
A star new-born, that drops into its place,
And which, once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.

’What should we do in that small colony
Of pinched fanatics, who would rather choose
Freedom to clip an inch more from their hair,
Than the great chance of setting England free? 
Not there, amid the stormy wilderness, 180
Should we learn wisdom; or if learned, what room
To put it into act,—­else worse than naught? 
We learn our souls more, tossing for an hour
Upon this huge and ever-vexed sea
Of human thought, where kingdoms go to wreck
Like fragile bubbles yonder in the stream,