Poems (Sill)/The Reformer
EFORE the monstrous wrong he sets him down—One man against a stone-walled city of sin.For centuries those walls have been a-building;Smooth porphyry, they slope and coldly glassThe flying storm and wheeling sun. No chink,No crevice lets the thinnest arrow in.He fights alone, and from the cloudy rampartsA thousand evil faces gibe and jeer him.Let him lie down and die: what is the right,And where is justice, in a world like this? But by and by, earth shakes herself, impatient;And down, in one great roar of ruin, crashWatch-tower and citadel and battlements.When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldierStands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars.
THE REFORMER.
EFORE the monstrous wrong he sets him down—One man against a stone-walled city of sin.For centuries those walls have been a-building;Smooth porphyry, they slope and coldly glassThe flying storm and wheeling sun. No chink,No crevice lets the thinnest arrow in.He fights alone, and from the cloudy rampartsA thousand evil faces gibe and jeer him.Let him lie down and die: what is the right,And where is justice, in a world like this? But by and by, earth shakes herself, impatient;And down, in one great roar of ruin, crashWatch-tower and citadel and battlements.When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldierStands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars.