Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/93

Be not like this; for I would scan to-day
Strong thoughts on all your faces—no regret,
No fine commiseration—oh, not that,
Not that! Nor say of me, when I am gone,
That I was cold and harsh, for I was warm
To strangeness, and for you . . . Say not like that
Of me—nor think of me that I reproached
The friends of my tight battles and hard years,
But say that I did love them to the last
And in my love reproved them for the grief
They did not—for they dared not—throw away.
Courage, my boys,—courage, is what you need:
Courage that is not all flesh-recklessness,
But earnest of the world and of the soul—
First of the soul; for a man may be as brave
As Ajax in the fury of his arms,
And in the midmost warfare of his thoughts
Be frail as Paris . . . For the love, therefore,
That brothered us when we stood back that day
From Delium—the love that holds us now
More than it held us at Amphipolis—
Forget you not that he who in his work
Would mount from these low roads of measured shame
To tread the leagueless highway must fling first
And fling forevermore beyond his reach