Was verified in him: what need we say

Of one who made success where others failed,
Who, with no light save that of common day,
Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed,
But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate van
Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man.

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze
Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair
With the beguiling light of vanished days;
This is relentless granite, bleak and bare,
Roughhewn and scornful of æsthetic phrase;
Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams,
The Present's hard, uncompromising light
Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams,
Yet vindicates some pristine natural right
O'ertopping that hereditary grace

Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race.

So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so,

Not in the purple born, to those they led
Nearer for that and costlier to the foe,
Newmoulders of old forms, by nature bred
The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to show,
Let but the ploughshare of portentous times
Strike deep enough to reach them where they lie:
Despair and danger are their fostering climes,
And their best sun bursts from a stormy sky:
He was our man of men, nor would abate
The utmost due manhood could claim of fate.

Nothing ideal, a plain-people's man

At the first glance, a more deliberate ken

Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ran
Such blood as quelled the dragon in his den,
Made harmless fields and better worlds began:
He came grim-silent, saw and did the deed
That was to do; in his master-grip

Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed
Such sure conviction as that close-clamped lip;

He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew

He had done more than any simplest man might do.

Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steel
Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil sway;
The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to feel
The world's base coin, and glozing knaves made prey
Of him and of the entrusted Commonweal;

So Truth insists and will not be denied.

We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame,

As if in his last battle he had died

Victor for us and spotless of all blame,

Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk,

One of those still plain men that do the world's rough work.

ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF

WELLINGTON.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

BURY the Great Duke

With an empire's lamentation,

Let us bury the Great Duke

To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,

Mourning when their leaders fall,

Warriors carry the warrior's pall,

And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

Foremost captain of his time,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime!

O good gray head which all men knew,

O voice from which their omens all men drew,

O iron nerve to true occasion true,

O fall'n at length that tower of strength

Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew! Such was he whom we deplore.

The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.

The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more.

All is over and done:

Render thanks to the Giver,

England, for thy son.

Let the bell be toll'd:

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd;

And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd
Thro' the dome of the golden cross;

And the volleying cannon thunder his loss;
He knew their voices of old.

For many a time in many a clime

His captain's-ear has heard them boom

Bellowing victory, bellowing doom:

When he with those deep voices wrought,

Guarding realms and kings from shame;

With those deep voices our dead captain taught

The tyrant, and asserts his claim

In that dread sound to the great name,
Which he has worn so pure of blame,
In praise and in dispraise the same,
A man of well-attemper'd frame.

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Follow'd by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honor shower'd 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,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,

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 thro' 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.

WITHIN a week after Hastings landed at Plymouth (1785), Burke gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion seriously affecting a gentleman lately returned from India..

Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his position. Indeed that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in devising expedients, which had distinguished him in the East, seemed now to have forsaken him; not that his abilities were at all impaired; not that he was not still the same man who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar, who had made the Chief Justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had deposed Cheyte Sing and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns