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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS

First Line: A SCHOLAR IS A WONDROUS WIGHT
Last Line: THE SCHOLAR'S RECOMPENSE.
Subject(s): MCCALL, SAMUEL WALKER (1851-1923);
A scholar is a wondrous wight,
God's creature through and through;
In what he does a heartening sight,
And what he scorns to do.

In hermit calm he dwells alone,
And yet is blithe and bold;
He finds the philosophic stone,
But will not make the gold.

He sways the sceptre of the air,
Is sovereign of the soil,
Yet never knows a flighty care
Nor bends in groundling toil.

To farthest bounds of land and sea
The scholar dares to roam;
But in his heart, where'er he be,
He stoutly bides at home.

He questions all, and has no fears;
Tastes all, and feels no smart.
He sets dull mortals by the ears,
Then watches them apart.

He has a probe for everything,
And salve for every probe.
He weighs the dust on a beetle's wing,
He weighs the massy globe.

As others garner shining grain
The scholar garners truth.
That is his health, and that his pain;
His age, and yet his youth.

Are others merry? He is sad.
Or sad? He dares to smile.
He finds a good in every bad,
A woe in every wile.

He walks along a lonely shore
With eager, anxious mien;
He stands amid a battle's roar
Undoubting and serene.

He darts his blame, he flings his praise,
With equal hardihood;
He crosses all our common ways,
Yet loves the common good.

And thus the scholar lives his life,
Close-pressed yet sundered far,
And carries into clanging strife
The silence of a star.

Men doubt the scholar, men despise
His plodding, rigid pains;
The brute in man so slowly dies,
The God so slowly reigns.

Men scout the scholar, bid him bide
Impassive as a nun,
And back of dusty volumes hide
When manly deeds are done.

Men, raised by thought above the clod,
By thinking doubly born,
Men, brought by thinking close to God,
The thinker dare to scorn.

Men place their crowns on empty brows,
Men sceptre savage hands,
Men take their rulers from the sloughs
To brutalize the lands.

And all the while, alone, apart,
The scholar bides his time,
Unfretted in his constant heart,
Untouched by mud and slime.

For Thought can wait, can always wait
In safety and content.
His is the power, his the state,
And his the firmament.

In crises desperate and grim,
In times of awful ill,
The people turn at length to him,
And ask his quiet will.

The people, tired of bludgeon blows,
Of trickery and guess,
And sick of all their stupid woes,
Will turn to thoughtfulness.

They call the scholar from his books,
The writer from his pen,
And bid him leave his cloistered nooks
For noisy throngs of men.

The scholar heeds the strident call,
And loves the summons well.
The whole wide world is far too small
To make a scholar's cell.

He glories in new books to scan,
New lore with marvels rife,
For what so wondrous book as man,
What science matches life?

He carries from his quietness
A heart serenely pure,
A spirit calm in toil and stress,
Steady and firm and sure.

The howling clamors clang and crash,
The struggling factions roar,
And crude ambitions madly clash
Upon that Stygian shore.

And still he holds the scholar's creed
As by his study light,
Each problem is a book to read,
Each task a page to write.

And still he holds the simple thread
Through labyrinthine maze,
By truth alone sincerely led
In all his trustful ways.

Beset by Passions, each a foe,
By Greed's unholy crew,
He only has the truth to know,
The truth alone to do.

By truth he foils the creeping plot,
And heals the grievous wound;
Of truth he builds his Camelot
And frames his table round.

And Truth he makes his battle-cry
Where battle rages grim,
And all for truth that dare to die
Will boldly leap to him.

We hail the scholar! We, a band
Of simple clerkly folk,
Give to him each a heartening hand,
And favoring fates invoke.

Be his, in all his arduous ways,
The scholar's candid sense,
And his at last, with ample praise,
The scholar's recompense.



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