True Victory

Say, what is victory? Is it to abuse
The foeman’s visage with a bloodier bruise;
Deal swifter blows from strength of brawnlier limbs,
Till from his eyes to loud arena swims;
And while we stagger from the brutal ring
Some helping hand his battered form must bring?

Is it to sow on battle’s broader field
More dead than he, whose Harvest Home shall yield
Long feuds, and doubled hate’s intense desire,
That rakes up vengeance for a day of fire?
Or yet in carless dungeon-depths to drown
The sullen wrath whose murmurs will not down;
Or trample under, with remorseless feet, 
The heart that dares in silent hate to beat, 
Till all is order, cold and calm as snow 
That caps the red volcano's hell below?
No! plunging deeper than all visible life,
The plummet, Wisdom, sounds the sea of strife,
To find firm bottom, where no storm-waves march
For the rock base of its triumphal arch.
That conquest fails which only strikes the brand
It may refashion, from the invading hand.
While heart and soul in rebel arms remain, 
Our, half-won battles have been fought in vain.

When the free spirit of progressive right
Brings darker natures to the law of light, 
Diviner victory has a nobler crown 
Than ever graced the warrior's best renown;
More sacred, even, than the fairest boughs 
That soothe the terrors of old Freedom's brows,
When, seamed with glorious scars, all-hailed he comes
From tyrants crushed, to liberated homes, 
Is the rich crown eternal victory brings 
Of woven amaranth, from the King of Kings.

Our foes are conquered when our nobler arts 
Have tamed their manners and subdued their hearts:
When brutal Ignorance bows before the might
Of sceptered Learning, asking for more light, 
And savage arms, that feed their blood-thirst now.
Gleam through the vine, end glitter on the plow;
When all the relics of barbaric time
Are swept away in Freedom's march sublime:
And whips and chains, with all the wrong they mean,
Melt from their souls, as from their hands made clean;
(For these are symbols, shadowy shapes of sin;
Kept till their vital spirit dies within.)
Then only then, the genuine foe is slain, 
When his low nature meets our higher plane,
For the crushed heart sheds hate at every pore 
While hearts reclaimed by love are ours for-evermore.