 | English Roses |  |
464
NO LAURELS.
He needs no laurels for his head,He needs no vulgar shouts of men;
He liveth still and is not dead,
All history shall be his pen.
His name was sculptured not in stone
Nor blazoned by the painter's art,
He asked no crumbling crown or throne
And dwells in every human heart.
He let the soldier trace in blood
The paltry triumph of a day,
For revolutions' rising flood
To sweep it and his sword away.
He let the statesman's gilded lie
Flaunt for a moment at its power,
And then in shame and shadows die
With other creatures of an hour.
He let the poet idly sing
Of visions past and vain as clouds,
And fawn as lacquey to a king
Or shape for patriots their shrouds.
While for himself he was the slave
Of all and bare the people's ban,
And thus for evermore his grave
Is but the grateful mind of man.
| English Roses | |