Brock
ONE voice, one people, one in heart
And soul and feeling and desire.
Re-light the smouldering martial fire
And sound the mute trumpet! Strike the lyre!
The hero dead cannot expire:
The dead still play their part.
Raise high the monumental stone!
A nation’s fealty is theirs,
And we are the rejoicing heirs,
The honoured sons of sires whose cares
We take upon us unawares
As freely as our own.
We boast not of the victory,
But render homage, deep and just,
To his–to their–immortal dust,
Who proved so worthy of their trust;
No lofty pile nor sculptured bust
Can herald their degree.
No tongue can blazon forth their fame–
The cheers that stir the sacred hill
Are but mere promptings of the will
That conquered them, that conquers still;
And generations yet shall thrill
At Brock’s remembered name.
Some souls are the Hesperides
Heaven sends to guard the golden age,
Illumining the historic page
With record of their pilgrimage.
True martyr, hero, poet, sage,–
And he was one of these.
Each in his lofty sphere, sublime,
Sits crowned above the common throng:
Wrestling with some pythonic wrong
In prayer, in thunders, thought or song,
Briareus-limbed, they sweep along,
The Typhons of the time.
