That man is great, and he alone,
Who serves a greatness not his own,
For neither praise nor pelf;
Content to know and be unknown:
Whole in himself.
Strong is that man, he only strong,
To whose well-ordered will belong,
For service and delight,
All powers that, in the face of Wrong,
Establish Right.
And free is he, and only he,
Who, from his tyrant passions free,
By Fortune undismayed,
Hath power upon himself, to be
By himself obeyed.
If such a man there be, where'er
Beneath the sun and moon he fare,
He cannot fare amiss;
Great Nature hath him in her care,
Her cause is his;
Who holds by everlasting law
Which neither chance nor change can flaw,
Whose steadfast course is one
With whatsoever forces draw
The ages on;
Who hath not bowed his honest head
To base Occasion; nor, in dread
Of Duty, shunned her eye;
Nor truckled to loud times; nor wed
His heart to a lie;
Nor feared to follow, in the offense
Of false opinion, his own sense
Of justice unsubdued;
Nor shrunk from any consequence
Of doing good;
He looks his Angel in the face
Without a blush; nor heeds disgrace
Whom naught disgraceful done
Disgraces. Who knows nothing base
Fears nothing known.
Not morseled out from day to day
In feverish wishes, nor the prey
Of hours that have no plan,
His life is whole, to give away
To God and man.
For though he live aloof from ken,
The world's unwitnessed denizen,
The love within him stirs
Abroad, and with the hearts of men
His own confers.
The judge upon the justice-seat;
The brown-backed beggar in the street;
The spinner in the sun;
The reapers reaping in the wheat;
The wan-cheeked nun
In cloisters cold; the prisoner lean
In lightless den, the robed queen;
Even the youth who waits,
Hiding the knife, to glide unseen
Between the gates--
He nothing human alien deems
Unto himself, nor disesteems
Man's meanest claim upon him.
And where he walks the mere sunbeams
Drop blessings on him.
Because they know him Nature's friend,
One whom she doth delight to tend
With loving kindness ever:
Helping and heartening to the end
His high endeavor.
--Edward Bulwer Lytton.