Flotsam and Jetsam :: :: University of Virginia Library

Once more, ye millions, in this roar
And rush of life—O pause once more!
Pause for a moment's pulse of grief, and pay the senseless ashes
A great dead Spirit wore, the debt you cannot pay the Spirit!
For the poor clay's poor glory borrow
The sable pageantry of sorrow;
To that proud Fane convey it, where in vain Oblivion dashes
Its surge against the rocklike fame our most renowned inherit;
The death-demolished Shape restore in deathless stone;
In marble mimicry revive the flitting phantom gone!
Fix it in breathing bronze to grace your finest square—
Noble amid the noblest there!
Give honours all—the best how small—
Pomp, anthems, plumes, processions slow,
All gloomy gauds of garish woe—

To rites his rough black followers paid!
The nine-months' funeral march they made,
And toiled and bore those relics dear
A thousand miles in hope and fear
Through tribes at peace and tribes at war
From Afric's heart to Zanzibar!—
Alas, all honours bright or dim,
But soothe ourselves, not solace him!
Solace!—at mute Ilala's melancholy goal
Death on his last of conscious life, such lonely anguish, stole;
No face of kith or kindred nigh to comfort, cheer, console!
‘Build me a hut to die in;
Heap grass upon the roof,’ he said, ‘Cold—cold!’—
O piteous, piteous words to breathe his latest sigh in,
A hero so high-souled!—
But comfort ye, O comfort ye!—tomb, tablets, statues, plan;
And load with honour, reverence, love, the dust that was the Man!

II

How famed amid Aonian flights,
Ideal heroic height of heights,
That billowy battle echoing yet in grandly-rolling waters
Of old Homeric song by races immemorial cherished!
But here, in combat mightier, grander,
Than when Pelides braved Scamander,

Battling his coil of River-Systems gloriously perished
No visionary vulgar hero of a thousand slaughters!
But one great heart—Humanity's most human child;
Her loving Champion calmly keen; indomitably mild;
Inexorably firm in merciful emprise;
Relentless in self-sacrifice!
To save that life in such a strife,
No striding God with eyes aflame,
No day-outdazzling Goddess came!
Only across far Ocean's blue,
Once to his aid a Stranger flew:
Did fabled rage to root out wrong
E'er dream a rescue worthier song?
Those rough jack-boots and leathern belt,
That white-veiled hat of homely felt
To screen the bold benignant brow,
Hid real romance of ruddier glow
Than laurelled Genius lends gold casque or jewelled mail
Of errant knights for glory athirst or holiest Holy Grail!—
Alas, that all the generous help should be of no avail!
‘Build me a hut to die in;
‘Heap on more grass!’ he murmured, ‘Cold—so cold!’—
Piteous—such piteous words to breathe his latest sigh in,
Discoverer dauntless-souled!—
But comfort ye, O comfort ye! to think through life's short span,
How hero kindles hero in the kindly cause of Man!

III

O mute reserve of things sublime!
O day that lifts a torch to Time!
When lost for years in lawless lands and Rapine's rude dominions
The grand old graybeard stood revealed—calm, simple, unimposing!
Only the cap's gold band long faded,
Dim aureole round the brow care-jaded,
True envoy of the Essential Good as truthfully disclosing,
As lightning-liveried Angels' palms, or Seraphs' sunbeam-pinions!
Lo! there—as when in some pale cluster faint and far
Unguessed, the keen Sky-searcher finds his famous flying star—
The Man half Myth comes forth! of wan and weary mien,
Yet buoyant, resolute, serene.
But more renown that Day shall crown,
When, his bold way through regions won,
Unknown since first uprose the Sun,
He left one daring track of light
From Vasco's storm-beleaguered height
To where on azure hyaline
Red-roofed Loanda's white walls shine;
Then scorned in high-rapt heedlessness
The Siren voices of success;
Turned unbeguiled from beckoning Fame
And forced his fever-stricken frame

Back to the East once more; the accomplished marvel spurned
As little worth, so much might still by still more toil be learned!
But mark what meed that lion-crippled Lion-heart has earned:
‘Build me a hut to die in:
Heap on the roof more grass: O cold—so cold!’—
Most piteous, piteous words to breathe his latest sigh in,
King-traveller truest-souled!—
But comfort ye, O comfort ye! so great a course he ran;
Such wondrous deeds are done by resolute enduring Man!

IV

How blest who give their lives to bless
Mankind with more of happiness!
So given was his: to open lands where one day shall luxuriate
His country's Commerce giant-limbed: and Peace in union glorious
With Freedom, Light and Order revel,
Where now ramps every fiend of Evil;
To witch a hundred wives stark nude in patterned paint uproarious,
Brute-kings on infants fed, leap high in maniac dance infuriate;
Or murderous thrice as men, wild women-regiments slay
For Sots who lop off human heads like thistletops in play;
Skulls hang on trees like fruit:—O were the day at hand
When fast and far Steamship or car,
Shall bear Skill's rich results by banks
Where reeds slide up in tufted ranks,

So stilly downward creeps the while
The loglike studded crocodile;—
Or furrow-foam some vast expanse
Of silver, where Morn's level glance
Gilds rings far-circling from their source—
The pink-white rolling river-horse!
Yes! happier Life shall haunt her bowers,
Full parks and woods aflame with flowers!
But he, the oppressed one's friend and father, East and West,
The blameless, brave and gentle Giaour e'en Moslem bigots blest,
Must nothing learn or know of this, lapped in unconscious rest!
‘Build me a hut to die in;
Heap grass upon the roof; so cold—so cold!’—
Piteous, ah piteous words, to breathe his latest sigh in,
Great pioneer pure-souled!—
But comfort ye, O comfort ye! such blessings he began;
The Morning-star of such a noon was this much-suffering Man!

V

Do not these dead great Spirits breathe
In hearts that feel what they bequeath?
Still cries not his: ‘Thou crusher of the snake-armed Monster hideous
That stained with clouds of shame and crime the incarnadined Atlantic,

England! with riches never-ending,
And empire like the skies extending
Which victories thick as stars have won—O use thy power gigantic
For Afric, vexed by vampire-chiefs and robber-gangs perfidious!
Loose her long rows of wretches strung beadlike for sale—
Hell's rosaries where fiends count no prayer, but curse and groan and wail:
Let Knowledge blazing through the jungle Ignorance, scare
Witchcraft and all worse reptiles there!
What nobler task should nation ask?
The Roman made a proud decree
That taxed the whole wide World should be;
A loftier hest Heaven leaves for thee—
Let all a wider World be free!
Spain's vaunted victor-days of old
Loom glimmering red with blood and gold:
But Thou! let Freedom's flute-notes low
By Ophir's coast, once golden, flow;
And Time shall waft the holy tune
Up to the Mountains of the Moon!
Then shall a lovelier Law of boundless Love infuse
Some reverence for the meanest clay a human Soul indues!’—
Lives not his own in thoughts like these?—But on that scene we muse:

‘Build me a hut to die in;
I am going home,’ he murmured, ‘Cold—so cold!’—
Ah! not all piteous words, to breathe his latest sigh in,
That hero heavenly-souled!—
Then comfort ye, O comfort ye! for only one thing can,
The high immortal Hope that soothed the lonely-dying Man!

1874.