Classic Poem

When step by step fate beats me farther back
Until I stand upon the ultimate,
It is not will nor instrument I lack
To put myself beyond the spoils of fate;
Nor duty to a Maker that made ill,
Nor judgment from the lips of living men,
Nor end of what I only might fulfil,
Nor pain of endless doom arrests me then.
I hold my sword because, the chasm past,
I fear the encounter with those mighty dead
That made each bloody slope unto the last
A pasture-land where climbing flocks are fed.
I fear lest they come, vast and justified,
With mute, appraising eyes,—and turn aside.