When that great Kings return to clay, Or Emperors in their pride, Grief of a day shall fill a day, Because its creature died. But we--we reckon not with those Whom the mere Fates ordain, This Power that wrought on us and goes Back to the Power again. Dreamer devout, by vision led Beyond our guess or reach, The travail of his spirit bred Cities in place of speech. So huge the all-mastering thought that drove-- So brief the term allowed-- Nations, not words, he linked to prove His faith before the crowd. It is his will that he look forth Across the world he won-- The granite of the ancient North-- Great spaces washed with sun. There shall he patient make his seat (As when the Death he dared), And there await a people’s feet In the paths that he prepared. There, till the vision he foresaw Splendid and whole arise, And unimagined Empires draw To council ’neath his skies, The immense and brooding Spirit still Shall quicken and control. Living he was the land, and dead, His soul shall be her soul! GENERAL JOUBERT [Page 77] (DIED MARCH 27, 1900) With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife, He had no part whose hands were clear of gain; But subtle, strong, and stubborn, gave his life To a lost cause, and knew the gift was vain. Later shall rise a people, sane and great, Forged in strong fires, by equal war made one; Telling old battles over without hate-- Not least his name shall pass from sire to son. He may not meet the onsweep of our van In the doomed city when we close the score; Yet o’er his grave--his grave that holds a man-- Our deep-tongued guns shall answer his once more! THE PALACE [Page 78] When I was a King and a Mason--a Master proven and skilled-- I cleared me ground for a palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt, I came on the wreck of a palace such as a King had built. There was no worth in the fashion--there was no wit in the plan-- Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran-- Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone: ‘_After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known._’ Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew, I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew. Lime I milled of the marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread; Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead. Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart. As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned. * * * * *