A poor monk searching in his cell,
What honors he has won!
The nations crown him faithful,
A man whom truth made free;
God give us for these easier times
More men as real as he!

--Marianne Farningham.

THE MARTYRS

Flung to the heedless winds,
Or on the waters cast,
The martyrs' ashes, watched,
Shall gathered be at last;
And from that scattered dust,
Around us and abroad,
Shall spring a plenteous seed
Of witnesses for God.

The Father hath received
Their latest living breath;
And vain is Satan's boast
Of victory in their death;
Still, still, though dead, they speak,
And, trumpet-tongued, proclaim
To many a wakening land,
The one availing name.

--Martin Luther, tr. by John A. Messenger.

Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this--and knows no more--
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before;
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson.

ETERNAL JUSTICE

The man is thought a knave, or fool,
Or bigot, plotting crime,
Who, for the advancement of his kind,
Is wiser than his time.
For him the hemlock shall distil;
For him the axe be bared;
For him the gibbet shall be built;
For him the stake prepared.
Him shall the scorn and wrath of men
Pursue with deadly aim;
And malice, envy, spite, and lies,
Shall desecrate his name.
But Truth shall conquer at the last,
For round and round we run;
And ever the Right comes uppermost,
And ever is Justice done.

Pace through thy cell, old Socrates,
Cheerily to and fro;
Trust to the impulse of thy soul,
And let the poison flow.
They may shatter to earth the lamp of clay
That holds a light divine,
But they cannot quench the fire of thought
By any such deadly wine.
They cannot blot thy spoken words
From the memory of man
By all the poison ever was brewed
Since time its course began.
To-day abhorred, to-morrow adored,
For round and round we run,
And ever the Truth comes uppermost,
And ever is Justice done.

Plod in thy cave, gray anchorite;
Be wiser than thy peers;