John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Personal PoemsThe Hero
“O
Without reproach or fear;
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear!
Sad Zutphen’s field above,—
The lion heart in battle,
The woman’s heart in love!
Woman’s pride, and not her scorn:
That once more the pale young mother
Dared to boast ‘a man is born’!
No sun-bowed cascade wakes;
No tall, heroic manhood
The level dulness breaks.
Without reproach or fear!
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear!”
To the time her proud pulse beat,
“Life hath its regal natures yet,
True, tender, brave, and sweet!
One man, at least, I know,
Who might wear the crest of Bayard
Or Sidney’s plume of snow.
Died away the Grecian sun,
And the far Cyllenian ranges
Paled and darkened, one by one,—
Cleaving all the quiet sky,
And against his sharp steel lightnings
Stood the Suliote but to die.
The crescent blazed behind
A curving line of sabres,
Like fire before the wind!
Rode he of whom I speak,
When, groaning in his bridle-path,
Sank down a wounded Greek.
Wet with many a ghastly stain,
Gazing on earth and sky as one
Who might not gaze again!
Back on foes that never spare,
Then flung him from his saddle,
And placed the stranger there.
Through a stormy hail of lead,
The good Thessalian charger
Up the slopes of olives sped.
He almost felt their breath,
Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
Between the hills and death.
He gained the solid land,
And the cover of the mountains,
And the carbines of his band!”
Said the moist-eyed listener then,
“But one brave deed makes no hero;
Tell me what he since hath been!”
Still an honor without stain,
In the prison of the Kaiser,
By the barricades of Seine.
The sign of valor true;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
The Cadmus of the blind,
Giving the dumb lip language,
The idiot-clay a mind.
Serenely day by day,
With the strong man’s hand of labor
And childhood’s heart of play.
Sir Lancelot and his peers,
Brave in his calm endurance
As they in tilt of spears.
As stars in noonday skies,
All that wakes to noble action
In his noon of calmness lies.
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave,—
Wherever sinks a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
An answer in his own.
Without reproach or fear!
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here?”