Chapter IX

What? cheer we the man?
No doubt, in youth
There were times when the joy in his heart overran
At a smile from one who knew him in truth;
There were times, years later, when merely a tear
From a grateful eye
Would have seem’d more dear
Than all the glitter that gold could buy;
But, alas! in age, when character stands
As fix’d as yon monument, then it demands,
Ere aught can move it, far more, far more
Than the cheer or the sigh that had stirr’d it of yore.
Not oft, nor till ages of suns and storms
Have wrought with the verdure in earthly forms,
Are these turn’d into stone, no more to decay.
But often on earth
The owners of worth
That men image in marble grow stony, that way.
Ah, man, whom in hardship you might make a friend
And turn from—beware, beware in the end,
Lest he whom you harden grow hard unto you.
O world, when ready your hero to cheer,
How heeds he your welcome? say, what does he do?
His eye, does it see? his ear, does it hear?
His heart, does it throb? his pulse, does it thrill?
Or his touch, is it cold? his clasp, is it chill?—
O world, you have waited long; what have you done?
O man, you have wrought so long; what have you won?—

X.

That monument there,
So high, so fair,
That throne of light for the man who led,
Is only a tomb. They are cheering the dead.