Modern Hero, A

Are you sighing for a Hero, O Poet born too late
In a poor, exhausted universe, picked dry by the vampire Fate?
Come out from your sleek proprieties, and the polished platitudes
That soothe the ear of fashion and the brain of mincing dudes!
I ask not answer haunted outlaws, the merry men bluff and brave.
Who rob myriad and the Bishop to succor a plodding knave;
Nor where the Goth, like an avalanche, comes down from the frozen North.
Or the battle-drum of Christendom calls the red Crusader forth;
But come with me to the churning sea, to the lonely wintry shore.
Where the serried breakers blanche and roll.
    And the smitten rocks like a surf-bell toll
And the loud artillery of the storm is a deep continuous roar! 
Behold the Man and the Action, the Hero and the Strife,
The dauntless deed to save, as need, not war upon, human life.

Here the winds are the Goths and Vandals that rush from their frozen zone;
    Their keen stokes cut like a sabre, they sting like arrows of steel.
Armed with the shaggy “roofer” and the slouched tarpaulin alone,
    The stout Patrol to the measured goal, tramps on with sturdy heel;
One word of cheer to his brave compeer, from a solitude like his own.
Then he turns, retracing his dreary march, monotonous and lone!
The long, gray curve of the beaches has a hem of drifted sleet.
Slipping and crunching like inland snow beneath his hardy feet;
The surf with an icy plunge and whoop dives into it, shouldering back
The seething mass, as of crumbled glass, to mix with the brown-sea wrack.

Does he need the blare of the trumpet to hold his courage high?
He has the scream of the Northwind – black eagle of the sky!
Shall the drumbeat measure and steady the tramp of his unrelaxing feet?
The hollow air is full of the throb of the marching billows beat!
Shall he want the grace of silver lace with its flattering mark of rank.
And the shining signs of valor on a breast that never shrank?
Ah well! that bosom is crusted with jewels of frozen spray.
That glittery in icy moonbeams, or the watch-tower’s steady ray,
Not the pride of the Czar hides his Lord of War, could a prouder badge display!

When the signal gun is booming from a ship on the terrible reef,
And the red lips of the rocket shriek with the startling call for relief.
No hero of faith or battle, disdaining coward breath.
Flings swifter or nobler defiance in the teeth of danger and death!
    Then blooms the flower of endurance, the hardy plant he rears
Among the dreary sand dunes where the withered sedges hiss.
    And his bronzed cheek feels but never fears,
The Northwind’s mocking kiss!

Alone in the lurid midnight, by the breaker’s ghostly gleam.
Alone with the boding sea-moan and the startled cormorant’s scream.
To every sound, alert as a hound, alert to every glimmer.
He walks the desolate salt sea sand.
Till the torch in the red-armed Pharos’ hand
Through the struggling morn grows dimmer! 
Then leaves his beat to another’s feet, and away from the seething foam,
Away from the gray dune’s desert land,
He follows a light that is never quenched, the pharos of Love and Home.