University of Virginia Library

EPILOGUE.

Speed thee well, noble soul, gallant heart,
Who unscared goest forth to the strife!
Speed thee well, wheresoever thou art,
In the ranks of the armies of life,
Who dost battle for Good to the death,
In that battle which never shall cease:
And whose truth, long as falsehood hath breath,
Will not parley with falsehood for peace!
Who aloud, tho' unheard, criest No,
When earth's clamorous Yes doth assent
To the evil that's easy to do
In a world that's with evil content.
Yet restrain the exuberant sense
Of the strength that is theirs who are strong
In the Right: which, however immense,
Is not yet more immense than the Wrong.
For the battle, O soldier, is not
To the strong, nor the race to the swift.
For much given tho' little be got,
Yet, O giver, be glad of thy gift.
Though it be but a weed or a shell,
That the labour of ages hath given
Unto desert or ocean, to tell
Of how deluge and earthquake have striven,
Nature doth not despond: nor do thou
From man's feverish effort hope more
Than the labouring ages allow
Nature's infinite patience to store.
Look behind thee, and scan what is lost:
And around thee, behold what doth rest.
Lo, how little earth saves at the most
Of the life of her bravest and best!
Of what mighty endeavours begun
What results insufficient remain,
And of how many victories won
Half the spoils have been taken again!
For in scum this hot passion of life,
Seething over, is spent: and so loses
The possession of that which the strife
Of its turbulent impulse diffuses:
Until, self-defeated, it sinks
Back again to a lowlier level,
As, from bubbles that burst at the brinks,
Fall the leas of each lingering evil.
By evangel and angel from Heaven
Unto Earth's many mourners below,
Long of yore, the “Glad tidings” were given:
But Earth's gladness, O where is it now?
Long of yore, on the mountain, the voice
Of the merciful Master was heard
To the mourners proclaiming ‘Rejoice:’
And, rejoicing, they welcom'd his word:
To the hand of the rich man ‘Restore,’
To the heart of the poor man ‘Be fed,’
And ‘Be heal'd,’ to the souls that were sore,
And to all men ‘Be brothers,’ it said.
But, since Christ hath been nail'd to the tree,
Fruits unripe have our hands gather'd of it:
Noisy worship of lip and of knee,
Niggard love, not of love, but of profit.
For the poor is opprest as of old:
And of all men is no man the brother:
And the Churches but gather their gold,
While the nations destroy one another:
Only, all of these things are now done
In another than Cæsar's name:
And all wrongs that are Christless go on
Unashamed of all Christian shame:
By the white man despised is the black:
And the strong hath his heel on the weak:
By the burthen still gall'd is the back:
And the goal is yet distant to seek:
Tho', to guide us, its shining is oft,
Like a fire on the midnight, discern'd:
When the hope of man's heart leaps aloft
From the chain that his anguish hath spurn'd:
As in Germany once: when a priest
Was chang'd into a man, for man's sake;
And his word, as the dawn fills the East,
Fill'd the West, till a world was awake;
In the letter a soul was created
By the breaking the seals of a book;
And man's conscience in man reinstated,
All conscienceless sovereignties shook.
Shook indeed, but not shatter'd! For straightway
When indignant and bold in the breach
Thought arose, and sped on thro' the gateway,
Whence she beckon'd to all and to each,
They that loosed her lost heart: and, as onward
She explored her companionless track
To the goal of her destiny—sunward,
They wrung hands, and shriek'd to her ‘Come back!’
So she pass'd from among them forever,
And hath left them where, still in the dark,
Blowing watchfires spent, they shall never
Blow the ashes thereof to a spark:
Once in England: when Hampden's high will,
Eliot's truth that was true to the death,
Pym's large speech, and the sword that hath still
‘Freedom,’ graven by Law, on its sheath,
Won for England what woe to the day
When England forgets to revere,
Or unheedfully casts it away,
Thro' Futurity helmless to steer!
Once in France: when the storm of the sound
Of the spirits of men rushing free
Shook the shores of the nations around,
As the roar of a jubilant sea;
And the heart of the feeble wax'd strong,
For his friends were as one flesh and blood
In the casting away of time's wrong
And the gathering up of earth's good;
But dull time goeth deafly since when
Those rejoicings were mingled by time
With the moans of the murders of men,
And the cursings of carnage and crime;
All is silent and sullen again:
And again the old cankering forms
Reappear, as when after the rain
From the earth reappear the earth-worms.
O the infinite effort that seems
But in infinite failure to finish!
Man's belief in the good that he dreams
Must each fact, he awakes to, diminish?
God forbid! Whom thank thou for whatever
Of evil remains—understood
As good cause for continued endeavour
In the battle 'twixt Evil and Good.
Heed not what may be gain'd or be lost
In that battle. Whatever the odds,
Fight it out, never counting the cost;
Man's the deed is, the consequence God's.
No man's labour for good is in vain,
Tho' he win, not the crown but the cross.
Every wish for man's good is a gain:
Every doubt of man's gain is a loss.
Not the price that we bargain to pay,
But the price that she sets on herself,
Is the value of Truth. Who can weigh
What the weight of her worth is in pelf?
To the soul, by whose lifelong endeavour
Age hath won from the losses of youth,
The mere loss of an untruth is ever
Good as great as the gain of a truth.
Men were fashion'd to love and to know:
And in Knowledge and Love are the goals
Of man's course, tho' its speed may be slow:
In our patience possess we our souls.
To love and to know ... winning love,
Winning knowledge, by labour'd degrees
From the doubts life compels us to prove,
And the wants we are forced to appease.
For man's privilege is to wring out
From the knowledge of evil the zest
That intensifies good: and from doubt
The convictions time puts to the test.
Old Experience—the bourne and the grave
Of the Sluggard's self-sepulchred mind—
Is the stronghold whence issues the Brave
To acquire new realms for mankind.
For had man's ever-widening will
No domain but Experience, his sons
Like his sires, would be savages still,
Chewing acorns and worshipping stones.
Deep in Nature's undrain'd Cornucopia
Every good that man seeks he shall find:
And to fools, only fools, is Utopia
The abode of the hopes of mankind.
For whate'er God hath made for man's good,
He hath granted man means to attain:
Say thou therefore ‘I will,’ not ‘I would,’
Undeterr'd by the coward's disdain.
All unblest would our fate be, indeed,
If yet all that can bless it were ended,
And we had but to write and to read
Of the deeds which the great buried men did!
Did they plant? what they planted we grow.
Every grain shall be ground into bread.
Every virtue that's in us we owe
To the unborn no less than the dead:
For, ere born yet, Posterity breathes
In our being: and shapes by its breath
The incentives (worth more than the wreathes)
Of the men that win wreathes after death.
God be thank'd that the dead have left still
Good undone, for the living to do—
Still some aim for the heart and the will
And the soul of a man to pursue!
God be thank'd for the ills that endure,
With the glory that's yet to be won
From the hurts we may hope yet to cure
By the deeds yet reserved to be done!
And thank God for the foes that remain,
If they hearten us, Friend, for the fight;
And the mercy that grants to man's gain
Yet a new gain forever in sight!
Forth! Rejoice in the Good that God gives
By the hand of beneficent Ill,
And be glad that He leaves to our lives
Means to make them heroical still.