SIR JOHN SIMEON
By Aubrey de Vere
| The world external knew thee but in part: It saw and honoured what was least in thee; The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy; The ways so winning, yet so pure from art; The cordial reverence, keen to all desert, All save thine own; the accost so frank and free; The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee, And shunned alike base praise, and hireling’s mart. These things men saw; but deeper far than these The under-current of thy soul worked on Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze, And unbeheld its way to ocean won: Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death. |