This is he: the same, who on the warrant of a man
Stood up, gave Fortune battle; to her bitterest face
Cried out, “I’ll front your minions ere their slave-hand trace
On free men’s backs, in sorry writing as no other can,
The crooked cypher which smug worldlings plan,
Expound, to key and color of their lust-fed wills,
As the all-in-all a tardy Destiny fulfills,
By its star, ports safe, ’gainst stress of man,
Her, hereto, drifting and unruddered van.
The same, who had his breeding at their rude expense,
Whose hardy training, to the pithy core,
So took, each fated tutor wonders evermore
Who wed such aptness to mere mortal sense.
In the gross, a bear; broad streak of fox; unsaintly, grim;
Withal, what Titan’s mettle gave its heat to him,
What Spark re-tempered, that may ne’er grow cold,
This hero’s substance from a peasant’s mold?
CECIL RHODES.
Equipped, who doubts, above Life’s common leave,
Where, privy to her council, mind and will
Bar lesser men, past plea of question, do fulfill
The searchless Fates—What did this man achieve
That Hope should stand deject, should at his parting grieve?
What bated sum of human ill
Files now, along with Wrong, its lessened bill?
What brutish yokes less hardened cleave?
How did he ease them—with what large conceive?
What forces muster ’gainst the Dark, but their array
Broke from the leadership of trusting Day,
Gave faction life, grew to command,
And, cozening, won him from the straighter way—
The same, in whose plain view yon heavens stand,
Rear wide this word, tho’ blurred with Dust,
“That truly great must first be just.”
CHAMBERLAIN.
Stalk Right, from crafty cover of the Might;
Commend your passes with the opportune;
Expound this lesson, never learnt too soon—
To rate all vision by the outward sight;
Hold all truth misty, save yon tricksy light,
Which fatuous dazzles from the specious star,
Where worldly holdings, hedged with mortgage, are,
Each brazen title which still suffered write
Such scribes, rude-figured, on the scroll of Fate:
All this—and yet, who doubts but they fulfill,
Tho’ at sorry single, some more general Will,
Hold dumb intelligence with Wisdom’s state;
That, tho’ locked in cypher yet the issue read,
Their blatant faction, ’gainst some halcyon date,
Works out, affirming, whence they silent speed,
His Council perfect, with no voice at odds,
The boundless findings of all-patient God’s?
SALISBURY.
Removed from his sires by long stretch of years,
Yet so closely virtued, to their wisdom bred,
Their bloods long wasted, but which then ran red,
Their dogged valors, which had now been fears,
Are still his coaches and untimely peers,
Sit at his board, carve at the ghostly spread,
Flout tame the sweeter wine, for which the ages bled,
And cups paid bitter down in price of tears,
As, rising to his call, they quench their eerie fast,
And toast, in heady measures of a wormy Old,
’Gainst newer truths that mock their pledgescold,
This, their own grim shadow from a weary past.
And yet, if were their eyes awake, should they not grow
To keener vision, should a cuter ear
Not catch Time’s footfall, nor so dare the Law,
Which, how so trespass do impugn it here—
As if its charter on mere probate ran—
Stars yet Time’s reaches since his maze began,
Illumes the pathway of the utmost sphere:
Yon law of Free, within whose widening groove,
For franker answer ’tward the Life, ’tward all—
Some response more worthy of the conscious soul—
God, man, and thing, and Nations move?
Ay; should they not wonder at that slow-to-learn will,
Heir to large occasions, but to spurn them still?