previous next

[270] With somewhat of thy lofty faith
     We lay thy outworn garment by,
Give death but what belongs to death,
     And life the life that cannot die!

Not for a soul like thine the calm
     Of selfish ease and joys of sense;
But duty, more than crown or palm,
     Its own exceeding recompense.

Go up and on! thy day well done,
     Its morning promise well fulfilled,
Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
     To holier tasks that God has willed.

Go, leave behind thee all that mars
     The work below of man for man;
With the white legions of the stars
     Do service such as angels can.

Wherever wrong shall right deny
     Or suffering spirits urge their plea
Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
     A hand to set the captive free!

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: