A Hero
If defeat strengthens and sweetens character, it is not defeat at all, but victory.
He sang of joy; whate’er he knew of sadness
He kept for his own heart’s peculiar share:
So well he sang, the world imagined gladness
To be sole tenant there.
For dreams were his, and in the dawn’s fair shining,
His spirit soared beyond the mounting lark;
But from his lips no accent of repining
Fell when the days grew dark;
And though contending long dread Fate to master,
He failed at last her enmity to cheat,
He turned with such a smile to face disaster
That he sublimed defeat.
Florence Earle Coates.
From “Poems.”