| |
| COURAGE came to you with your boyhood’s grace | |
| Of ardent life and limb. | |
| Each day new dangers steeled you to the test, | |
| To ride, to climb, to swim. | |
| Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death | 5 |
| With every breath. | |
| |
| So when you went to play another game | |
| You could not but be brave: | |
| An Empire’s team, a rougher football field, | |
| The end—perhaps your grave. | 10 |
| What matter? On the winning of a goal | |
| You staked your soul. | |
| |
| Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth | |
| With carelessness and joy. | |
| But in what Spartan school of discipline | 15 |
| Did you get patience, boy? | |
| How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain | |
| And not complain? | |
| |
| Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims, | |
| Impulsive as a colt, | 20 |
| How do you lie here month by weary month | |
| Helpless, and not revolt? | |
| What joy can these monotonous days afford | |
| Here in a ward? | |
| |
| Yet you are merry as the birds in spring, | 25 |
| Or feign the gaiety, | |
| Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day | |
| Should guess the agony. | |
| Lest they should suffer—this the only fear | |
| You let draw near. | 30 |
| |
| Greybeard philosophy has sought in books | |
| And argument this truth, | |
| That man is greater than his pain, but you | |
| Have learnt it in your youth. | |
| You know the wisdom taught by Calvary | 35 |
| At twenty-three. | |
| |
| Death would have found you brave, but braver still | |
| You face each lagging day, | |
| A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous, | |
| Divinely kind and gay. | 40 |
| You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate | |
| Of unkind Fate. | |
| |
| Careless philosopher, the first to laugh, | |
| The latest to complain, | |
| Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this | 45 |
| In your long fight with pain: | |
| Since God made man so good—here stands my creed— | |
| God’s good indeed. | |
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