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When men change swords for ledgers, and desert

The student’s bower for gold, some fears unnamed

I had, my Country—am I to be blamed?

Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,

Verily, in the bottom of my heart,

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.

For dearly must we prize thee; we who find

In thee a bulwark for the cause of men;

And I by my affection was beguiled:

What wonder if a Poet now and then,

Among the many movements of his mind,

Felt for thee as a lover or a child!

Wordsworth (1803).

Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record

One death struggle in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

J. R. Lowell (The Present Crisis).

Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil

Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.