His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye <br />Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still. <br />Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfill - <br />His face at once benign and proud and shy. <br />If envy scout, if ignorance deny, <br />His faultless patience, his unyielding will, <br />Beautiful gentleness and splendid skill, <br />Innumerable gratitudes reply. <br />His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties, <br />And seems in all his patients to compel <br />Such love and faith as failure cannot quell. <br />We hold him for another Herakles, <br />Battling with custom, prejudice, disease, <br />As once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell.<br /><br />William Ernest Henley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-chief-2/
