Livingstone Poem by Alexander Anderson

Bring him to England, for the goal is won;
The grand old man, whose soul was as a spark
From the great force of God, has nobly run
His life path, dying at the very mark.


Lo! the quick wires flash out their news, and look
How the deep nature of our sympathy
Wells up in sorrow that no bar can brook
For him whose name is for the years to be!


His is no paltry fading laurel bough,
No trophy when the useless fight is o'er,
But one green wreath of brotherhood is now
Girt round these toil-seam'd brows for evermore.


Noble to be like him, so firm of heart,
Pressing still forward, dragging on behind
The electric chain of fellowship to start
The same high feeling for our swarthier kind.


God-like his mission, and I count him one,
The gray-hair'd man, within whose large deep breast
A giant's soul beat till his task was done,
And, overwearied, he himself took rest.


We mourn not all alone; from those far lands
Where faces that, though dark, still show their tears,
Comes the sharp cry for help, and swarthy hands
Waving to us in all their hopes and fears.


We still have many props to lean upon,
But where shall they, our dusky brethren, seek
(Their pillar, Samson-like, by Death o'erthrown),
For one to take his work, and guide and speak?


The loss is theirs. And yet what mighty fruit
Will spring from it in the far coming time?
What tendrils from this man will grow and shoot
From heart to heart, and on from clime to clime?


Lo! as the years come, with their peace or strife,
I see each handful of their earnest men
Pause, and kneel down by this heroic life,
Till all its fervour makes them strong again.


And so hereafter (for we dare not name
Marble to him) he shall, in noble light,
Stand between two worlds apart, and by one claim
Lay dusky brother hands within the white.


Bring him to England, then—no other land
Shall offer Africa's apostle rest;
There lay him down, the noblest of that band
Who have God's very nature in their breast.