Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
    Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
    Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside. 
    Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
    And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 55

    Count me o’er earth’s chosen heroes,—­they were souls that stood alone,
    While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
    Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
    To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
    By one man’s plain truth to manhood and to God’s supreme design. 60

    By the light of burning heretics Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
    Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,
    And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned
    One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned
    Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. 65

    For Humanity sweeps onward:  where to-day the martyr stands,
    On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
    Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,
    While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
    To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden urn. 70

    ’Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
    Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers’ graves;
    Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;—­
    Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? 
    Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 75

    They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,
    Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s;
    But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,
    Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee
    The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. 80

    They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
    Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;
    Shall we make their creed our jailer?  Shall we, in our haste to slay,
    From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
    To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? 85

    New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
    They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
    Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
    Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
    Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key. 90