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VIII.

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Followed by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honor showered all her stars,
And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn.
Yea, let all good things await

Him who cares not to be great,

But as he saves or serves the state.

Not once or twice in our rough island-story,

The path of duty was the way to glory :
He that walks it, only thirsting

For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.

Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Through the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevailed,

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God himself is moon and sun.

Such was he his work is done.

:

But while the races of mankind endure,

Let his great example stand
Colossal, seen of every land,

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure;
Till in all lands and through all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory :

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame For many and many an age proclaim

At civic revel and pomp and game,

And when the long-illumined cities flame,

Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,

With honor, honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.

IX.

Peace, his triumph will be sung

By some yet unmoulded tongue

Far on in summers that we shall not see:

Peace, it is a day of pain

For one about whose patriarchal knee
Late the little children clung:

O peace, it is a day of pain

For one upon whose hand and heart and brain
Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.

Ours the pain, be his the gain!
More than is of man's degree
Must be with us, watching here
At this, our great solemnity.
Whom we see not we revere.
We revere, and we refrain

From talk of battles loud and vain,
And brawling memories all too free
For such a wise humility

As befits a solemn fane:

We revere, and while we hear
The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting toward eternity,

Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,
Until we doubt not that for one so true
There must be other nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be.

For though the Giant Ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore

Make and break, and work their will;
Though world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,

What know we greater than the soul?

On God and Godlike men we build our trust.
Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears:
The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears:
The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears;

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;

He is gone who seemed so great.

Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own

Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in state,

And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him.
But speak no more of his renown,

Lay your earthly fancies down,

And in the vast cathedral leave him.

God accept him, Christ receive him.

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EAK-WINGED is song,

Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
We seem to do them wrong,

Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
Our trivial song to honor those who come
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,
A gracious memory to buoy up and save
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave
Of the unventurous throng.

II.

To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back
Her wisest scholars, those who understood

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The deeper teaching of her mystic tome,
And offered their fresh lives to make it good:
No lore of Greece or Rome,

No science peddling with the names of things,
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,

Can lift our life with wings

Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,
And lengthen out our dates

With that clear fame whose memory sings

In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: Not such thy teaching, Mother of us all!

Not such the trumpet-call

Of thy diviner mood,

That could thy sons entice

From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest
Of those half-virtues which the world calls best,
Into War's tumult rude;

But rather far that stern device

The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood
In the dim, unventured wood,

The VERITAS that lurks beneath
The letter's unprolific sheath,

Life of whate'er makes life worth living,

Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,

One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.

III.

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

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