Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
On the Defeat of a Great Man
By William Wilberforce Lord (18191907)[Born in Madison Co., N. Y., 1819. Died, New York, N. Y., 1907. Poems. 1845.]
F
O’er towers and rock-built walls,
And perished nations, floods to tempests call
With hollow sound along the sea of time:
The great man never falls,—
He lives, he towers aloft, he stands sublime;
They fall who give him not
The honor here that suits his future name,—
They die and are forgot.
Is his own shadow, and not cast by thee:
A shadow that shall grow
As down the heaven of time the sun descends,
And on the world shall throw
His godlike image, till it sinks where blends
Time’s dim horizon with Eternity.