THE REFORMERS
1901
NOT in the camp his victory lies
Or triumph in the market-place,
Who is his Nation's sacrifice
To turn the judgment from his race.
Happy is he who, bred and taught
By sleek, sufficing Circumstance—
Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,
Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance—
Sees, on the threshold of his days,
The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to unheralded dismays
Submits his body and his soul;
The fatted shows wherein he stood
Foregoing, and the idiot pride,
That he may prove with his own blood
All that his easy sires denied—
Ultimate issues, primal springs,
Demands, abasements, penalties—
The imperishable plinth of things
Seen and unseen, that touch our peace.
For, though ensnaring ritual dim
His vision through the after-years,
Yet virtue shall go out of him—
Example profiting his peers.
