utmost debt,
        I could divine he knew
    That death within the sulphurous hostile lines,
    In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs,
        Plucks heart’s-ease, and not rue.

          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?

          Right in the van,
      On the red rampart’s slippery swell,
      With heart that beat a charge, he fell
        Forward, 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.

    III.

          His life’s expense
      Hath won for him coeval 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.

          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.

          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!

* * * * *

MY BOOK.

The trouble about biographies is that by the time they are written the person is dead.  You have heard of him remotely.  You know that he sang a world’s songs, founded great empires, won brilliant victories, did heroes’ work; but you do not know the little tender touches of his life, the things that bring him into near kinship with humanity, and set him by the household hearth without unclasping