Glory in winning a maid in the first wild heat of our youth,
When heaven comes down to the earth, and we walk in a Paradise;
Glory in being a hero and fighting for home and for truth,
And watch'd from a cherish'd land by a hundred thousand eyes.
Glory in being a statesman, with a steady hand on the helm,
Guiding a mighty nation through the breakers of courts and of kings;
Glory in fighting the hydras that struggle to overwhelm
The liberal nature of God in the roll of human things.
Glory in being a poet, with a life in the eyes of the gods,
Shaping oracular music to strike on the hearts of men;
Glory in tracking error to the mouth of her foul abodes,
And striking her dead with a sword in the shape of a paltry pen.
Glory in having the thought that can, Mentor-like, guide through the past,
Probing the depths of history with swift, miraculous wand;
That can dive into records of spleen and hate and bring out the truth at last,
 Like Mercury from the river with the woodman's axe in his hand.
Glory in labour, ay labour, though he hath not the gift of speech,
He hath better in countless muscle to proffer as earth may need;
His is the second triumph wherever his footsteps reach—
The shock of the peopled towns and the rush of the iron steed.
These are the glories that work with men, and bud, and blossom, and burst,
As the centuries roll into birth, and slowly round to their span;
But another glory is yet to be named—the highest, the best, the first—
It is his who stands as a prophet speaking God's voice to man.