“Once, when over purple mountains
Died away the Grecian sun,
And the far Cyllenian ranges
Paled and darkened, one by one,—
“Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
Cleaving all the quiet sky,
And against his sharp steel lightnings
Stood the Suliote but to die.
“Woe for the weak and halting!
The crescent blazed behind
A curving line of sabres,
Like fire before the wind!
“Last to fly, and first to rally,
Rode he of whom I speak,
When, groaning in his bridle-path,
Sank down a wounded Greek.
“With the rich Albanian costume
Wet with many a ghastly stain,
Gazing on earth and sky as one
Who might not gaze again!
“He looked forward to the mountains,
Back on foes that never spare,
Then flung him from his saddle,
And placed the stranger there.
“ ‘Allah! hu!’ Through flashing sabres,
Through a stormy hail of lead,
The good Thessalian charger
Up the slopes of olives sped.
“Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
He almost felt their breath,
Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
Between the hills and death.
“One brave and manful struggle,—
He gained the solid land,
And the cover of the mountains,
And the carbines of his band!”
“It was very great and noble,”
Said the moist-eyed listener then,
“But one brave deed makes no hero;
Tell me what he since hath been!”
“Still a brave and generous manhood,
Still an honor without stain,
In the prison of the Kaiser,
By the barricades of Seine.
“But dream not helm and harness
The sign of valor true;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
“Wouldst know him now? Behold him,
The Cadmus of the blind,
Giving the dumb lip language,
The idiot-clay a mind.
“Walking his round of duty
Serenely day by day,
With the strong man’s hand of labor
And childhood’s heart of play.
“True as the knights of story,
Sir Lancelot and his peers,
Brave in his calm endurance
As they in tilt of spears.
“As waves in stillest waters,
As stars in noonday skies,
All that wakes to noble action
In his noon of calmness lies.
“Wherever outraged Nature
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave,—
“Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever sinks a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
An answer in his own.
“Knight of a better era,
Without reproach or fear!
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here?”
RANTOUL
No more fitting inscription could be placed on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul than this: “He died at his post in Congress, and his last words were a protest in the name of Democracy against the Fugitive-Slave Law.”
One day, along the electric wire
His manly word for Freedom sped;
We came next morn: that tongue of fire
Said only, “He who spake is dead!”
Dead! while his voice was living yet,
In echoes round the pillared dome!
