The Grey Company

O THE GREY, grey company  
 Of the pallid dawn!  
O the ghostly faces  
 Ashen-like and drawn!  
The Lord’s lone sentinels  
 Dotted down the years—  
The little grey company  
 Before the pioneers!  
 
Dreaming of Utopias  
 Ere the time was ripe,  
They awoke to scorning,  
 To jeering and to strife.  
Dreaming of millenniums  
 In a world of wars,  
They awoke to shudder  
 At a flaming Mars.  
 
Never was a Luther  
 But a Huss was first—  
A fountain unregarded  
 In the primal thirst.  
Never was a Newton  
 Crowned and honoured well,  
But first a lone Galileo  
 Wasted in a cell.  
 
In each other’s faces  
 Looked the pioneers;—  
Drank the wine of courage  
 All their battle years.  
For their weary sowing  
 Through the world wide,  
Green they saw the harvest  
 Ere the day they died.  
 
But the grey, grey company  
 Stood every man alone  
In the chilly dawnlight:  
 Scarcely had they known  
Ere the day they perished  
 That their beacon star  
Was not glint of marshlight  
 In the shadows far.  
 
The brave white witnesses  
 To the truth within  
Took the dart of folly,  
 Took the jeer of sin.  
Crying, ‘Follow, follow  
 Back to Eden-gate!’  
They trod the Polar desert,—  
 Met the desert fate.  
 
Be laurel to the victor,  
 And roses to the fair;  
And asphodel Elysian  
 Let the hero wear:  
But lay the maiden lilies  
 Upon their narrow biers—  
The lone grey company  
 Before the pioneers!