THE OTHER SIDE OF IT

It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day. The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels— But give me your sun from yonder skies!” They had answered, “And afterward, what else?” Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! Nought man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run. There’s nobody on the house-tops now— Just a palsied few at the windows set; For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet, By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow. I go in the rain, and, more than needs, A rope cuts both my wrists behind; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds. Thus I entered, and thus I go! In triumphs, people have dropped down dead, “Paid by the world, what dost thou owe Me?”—God might question; now instead, ’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

“All honour to him who shall win the prize,” The world has cried for a thousand years; But to him who tries and who fails and dies, I give great honour and glory and tears. O great is the hero who wins a name, But greater many and many a time Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame, And lets God finish the thought sublime. And great is the man with a sword undrawn, And good is the man who refrains from wine; But the man who fails and yet fights on, Lo he is the twin-born brother of mine!

Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright!