James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
April 30The Death of Livingstone
By Roden Noel (18341894)Strange frondage murmers in a darkling morn:
Orphaned men cowed round the fires forlorn:
Nile shrouds his fountains: the dim living tomb
Of Africa still closed, Death’s blank-eyed doom—
No face beloved, no land where he was born—
Guerdons the warrior! No prayed-for bloom
Of home-love crowns him ere the year outworn;
But while faint eyes look far away with trust,
Death spurns the soul’s quenched altar in the dust!
… Is all, then, failure? Lives no Father there?
Do living hearts but supplicate dead air?
Is this the end of the Promethean
Indomitable, all-enduring man?
God fulfils the prayer:
He is at home; he rests; the work is done.
He hath not failed, who fails like Livingstone!
Radiant diadems all conquerors wear
Pale before his magnificent despair;
And whatsoever kingdoms men have won,
He triumphs dead, defeated, and alone,
Who learned sublimely to endure and dare!
For holy labour is the very end,
Duty man’s crown, and his eternal friend;
Reason from Chaos wards the world’s grand whole;
All Nature hath Love’s martyrdom for goal.
Who nobly toils, though none be nigh to see,
He only lives—he lives eternally.