BEFORE the monstrous wrong he sets him down -- One man against a stone-walled city of sin. For centuries those walls have been a-building; Smooth porphyry, they slope and coldly glass The flying storm and wheeling sun. No chink, No crevice lets the thinnest arrow in. He fights alone, and from the cloudy ramparts A thousand evil faces gibe and jeer him. Let him lie down and die: what is the right, And where is justice, in a world like this? But by and by, earth shakes herself, impatient; And down, in one great roar of ruin, crash Watch-tower and citadel and battlements. When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PRAIRIES by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT FLOWERS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW PATRIOTISM AND FREEDOM by JOANNA BAILLIE FAREWELL TO THE PILGRIMS by THEODORE M. BAKKE CHARACTERS: SARAH TAYLOR RIGBY by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS by MATHILDE BLIND ASOLANDO: SPECULATIVE by ROBERT BROWNING MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN by ROBERT BURNS TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. LO! I OPEN A DOOR by EDWARD CARPENTER |