Poems of Passion — 66 - Courage

COURAGE.

There is a courage, a majestic thing That springs forth from the brow of pain, full-grown, Minerva-like, and dares all dangers known, And all the threatening future yet may bring;

Crowned with the helmet of great suffering;

Serene with that grand strength by martyrs shown, When at the stake they die and make no moan, And even as the flames leap up are heard to sing: A courage so sublime and unafraid, It wears its sorrows like a coat of mail;

And Fate, the archer, passes by dismayed, Knowing his best barbed arrows needs must fail To pierce a soul so armored and arrayed That Death himself might look on it and quail.