University of Virginia Library

The setting sun fell low on Zutphen's plain;
The fight was over, and the victory won,
And out of all the din and stir of war
They bore the flower of Christian chivalry,
The life-blood gushing out. He came, the pure,
The true, the stainless, all youth's fiery glow,
All manhood's wisdom, blended into one,
To help the weak against the strong, to drive
The Spaniard from a land which was not his,
And claim the right of all men to be free,
Free in their life, their polity, their faith.
He came, no poor ambition urging on,
But loyalty and duty, first to God,
And then to her, the Virgin Queen, who ruled
His guileless heart, and of a thousand good
Found him the best. We wonder that he bowed
Before so poor an idol, knowing not
That noble souls transfer their nobleness
To that whereon they gaze, and through the veils
Of custom or of weakness reach the heart
That beats, as theirs, with lofty thoughts and true.
And now that life was ebbing. Men had hoped
To see in him the saviour of the state
From thickening perils, one in open war
To cope with Alva, and in subtle skill,
Bating no jot of openness and truth,
To baffle all the tortuous wiles of Spain:
And some who knew him better hoped to see
His poet's spirit do a poet's work,
With sweetest music giving voice and shape
To all the wondrous thoughts that stirred the age,
Moving the world's great heart, attracting all,
The children at their play, the old man bent
By blazing hearths, to listen and rejoice.

And now his sun was setting. Faint and weak
They bore him to his tent, and loss of blood
Brought on the burning thirst of wounded men,
And he too craved for water. Brothers true,
Companions of his purpose and his risk,
Brought from the river in their helmet cup
The draught he longed for. Yet he drank it not;
That eye had fallen on another's woe,
That ear was open to another's sigh,
That hand was free to give, and pitying love,
In that sharp pain of death, had conquered self.
The words were few and simple: “Not for me;
I may not taste: He needs it more than I:”
Few as all noblest words are, pearls and gems
Of rarest lustre; but they found their way,
More than all gifts of speech or poet's skill,
To stir the depths of England's heart of hearts,
And gave to Sidney's name a brighter life,
A nobler fame through all the immortal years,
Than Raleigh's friendship, or his own brave deeds,
Or counsels wise, or Spenser's silver notes,—
A trumpet-call to bid the heart awake,
A beacon-light to all the rising youth,
Fit crown of glory to that stainless life,
The perfect pattern of a Christian knight,
The noblest hero of our noblest age.