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Rudyard Kipling - The Reformers
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Not in the camp his victory lies
  Or triumph in the market-place,
Who is his Nation`s sacrifice
To turn the judgement from his race.

Happy is he who, bred and taught
  By sleek, sufficing Circumstance —
Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,
  Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance —

Seese, on the threshold of his days,
  The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to unheralded dismays
  Submits his body and his soul;

The fatted shows wherein he stood
  Foregoing, and the idiot pride,
That he may prove with his own blood
  All that his easy sires denied —

Ultimate issues, primal springs,
  Demands, abasements, penalties —
The imperishable plinth of things
  Seen and unseen, that touch our peace.

For, though ensnaring ritual dim
  His vision through the after-years,
Yet virtue shall go out of him —
Example profiting his peers.

With great things charged he shall not hold
  Aloof till great occasion rise,
But serve, full-harnessed, as of old,
  The Days that are the Destinies.

He shall forswear and put away
  The idols of his sheltered house;
And to Necessity shall pay
  Unflinching tribute of his vows.

He shall not plead another`s act,
  Nor bind him in another`s oath
To weigh the Word above the Fact,
  Or make or take excuse for sloth.

The yoke he bore shall press him still,
  And, long-ingrained effort goad
To find, to fashion, and fulfil
  The cleaner life, the sterner code.

Not in the camp his victory lies —
  The world (unheeding his return)
Shall see it in his children`s eyes
  And from his grandson`s lips shall learn!
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