Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MARTYRS OF THE MIND, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MARTYRS OF THE MIND, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Honour to the sacred past!
Last Line: From the martyrs of the mind.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Mankind; Thought; Human Race; Thinking


HONOUR to the sacred Past!
Reverence to the ancient days!
Yet believe them not the last
That demand your love and praise:
Think not that the olden story
Can within its depth enfold
All the beauty and the glory
That the heart of Man can hold.

Think not rashly that, because
Modern life is smooth and fine,
'Tis not subject to the laws
Of the Master's high design:
That we less require endurance
Than in days of coarser plan, --
That we less demand assurance
Of the Godhead hid in Man.

Trust me, Truth is still at war,
Just as in the hard old time,
With a thousand things that are --
Births of woe and food for crime:
Still to vindicate the right
Is a rough and thankless game;
Still the leader in the fight
Is the hindmost in the fame.

True, the penal fires are out --
True, the rack in rust has lain --
But the secret burning Doubt
And the pangs of Thought remain:
True, the mind of Man is free --
Free to speak and write at will,
But a power you cannot see
Still can plague, and waste, and kill.

Very tame our passions nestle,
Very even seem our brows,
Outward forces rarely wrestle,
Soft the words the age allows:
Incommunicable sadness
Yet is haunting all the while --
Yet one day the crouching madness
Leaps from under all the smile.

Ours is not the early Faith
Which our fathers gazed upon,
Till the iron gates of Death
With a golden splendour shone;
We must rest content with Hope,
Fair to aid, but frail to rule:
Gentle Hope! too weak to cope
With the villain and the fool.

Ours the shame to understand
That the World prefers the lie
That, with medicine in her hand,
She will sink and choose to die;
Ours the agonising sense
Of the Heaven this Earth might be,
If, from their blank indifference,
Men woke one hour and felt as we!

Heroes of the inward strife,
Whom your spirit cannot prize;
Saints of the mysterious life,
Whom no Church can canonize;
Unremembered -- unrecorded --
They are passing by you now;
Other gifts are here rewarded,
To far other names you bow.

Yet the Power appears to-morrow,
That to-day seems wholly lost,
And the reproductive sorrow
Is a treasure worth the cost:
Fate permits no break or suture
In the' Ideal of Mankind,
Weaving out its brightest Future
From the Martyrs of the Mind.





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