Some woman set her pale and quivering face,
Firm as a rock, against a man's disgrace;
A little child suffered in silence lest
His savage pain should wound a mother's breast;
Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down
And risked, in Truth's great name, the synod's frown;
A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws,
Did that which suddenly drew a world's applause;
And one to the pest his lithe young body gave
That he a thousand thousand lives might save.
IMPROMPTUS
EDWARD EVERETT HALE
Patriot, and sage, and lover of his kind—
The love he gives a thousandfold returns:
His is the wealth of love a great heart earns
By giving all that heart and soul and mind.
BARDS OF BRITAIN (1908)
The poets silent and the poets fled?
Not till these two that pluck the lyre are dead!
He of the patriot heart and Milton's line,
With soaring song and melody divine;
And he who makes the old days breathe again,
Yet sings the hour that is, and hearts of living men.
CALVÉ
Sweetness and strength, high tragedy and mirth;
And but one Calvé on the singing earth!
