Explore "Charles Sumner" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Garlands upon his grave, / And flowers upon his hearse, / And to the tender heart and brave / The tribute of this verse.
His was the troubled life, / The conflict and the pain, / The grief, the bitterness of strife, / The honor without stain.
Like Winkelried, he took / Into his manly breast / The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke / A path for the oppressed.
Then from the fatal field / Upon a nation's heart / Borne like a warrior on his shield! -- / So should the brave depart.
Death takes us by surprise, / And stays our hurrying feet; / The great design unfinished lies, / Our lives are incomplete.
But in the dark unknown / Perfect their circles seem, / Even as a bridge's arch of stone / Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death, / When life in death survives, / And the uninterrupted breath / Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high, / For ages would its light, / Still travelling downward from the sky, / Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies, / For years beyond our ken, / The light he leaves behind him lies / Upon the paths of men.