Page:Posthumous poems (IA posthumousswinb00swin).pdf/195

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MEMORIAL VERSES
 
Not prison, not the breath
Of doom denouncing death,
Could make the manhood in him burn less high
For one breath's space than when
It shone for following men,
A sign to show how man might live or die
With freedom in triumphant sight,
And hope elate above all fluctuant chance of fight.

The German fame of old,
By Roman hands inscrolled
As bright beyond all nations else borne down,
Shone round his banished head,
As round the deathless dead
With light bequeathed of one coequal crown:
And now that his and theirs are one
No time shall see the setting of that sovereign sun.

All this must all time know
While memories ebb and flow
Till out of blind forgetfulness is born
Fame deathless as the day,
When none may think to say
Her light is less than noon and even and morn:
When glories forged in hell-fire fade,
And warrior empires wither in the waste they made.

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