A glorious triumph. On that day of days <br />When, standing on the summit's utmost edge <br />Of my first mountain--top, I viewed the maze <br />Which I had travelled upwards, ledge on ledge, <br />And all that wilderness of rock and plain <br />Rolled at my feet, and, when with heel fast set <br />On Nature's neck, I knew the giant slain, <br />My thrall, my prisoner, on the parapet, <br />I was transfigured. Slowly in me rose <br />The throb of courage as a sense new born. <br />``Even Man,'' I cried, ``Man's self, my foe of foes, <br />The phantom of my fears, shall feel my scorn <br />Yet in a nobler war.'' And trembling then <br />I seemed to stand, I too, a man with men.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/esther-a-sonnet-sequence-xxix/
