friend all along!" If a man wrote odes at all, he could write them to
freedom then.

"By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
Remembering Thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured and slept,
And would'st not see."

How superb! But when that was written the weeping and agony were over,
the sleeper had awakened, the eyes saw. It was easy then to sing the
heroism of rebellious sorrow. But afterwards, while an issue was still
doubtful, while the cry of freedom was rising amid the obscurity, the
dust, and uncertainty of actual combat, with how blind a scorn did that
great poet of freedom pour upon Irishman and Boer a poison as virulent
as he had once poured upon the priests and kings of Italy!

Let us emerge from the depression of such common blindness, and recall
the memory of one whose vision never failed even in the midst of present
gloom to detect the spark of freedom. A few great names stand beside
his. Shelley, Landor, the Brownings, all gave the cause of Italy great
and, in one case, the most exquisite verse, while the conflict was
uncertain still. Even the distracted and hesitating soul of Clough, amid
the dilettante contemplation of the arts in Rome, was rightly stirred.
The poem that declared, "'Tis better to have fought and lost than never
to have fought at all," displayed in him a rare decision, while, even
among his hideous hexameters, we find the great satiric line--fit motto
for spectators at the bull-fights of freedom--"So that I 'list not,
hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!" But the name of Byron rises
above them all, not merely that he alone showed himself capable of deed,
but that the deed gave to his words a solidity and concrete power such