How He Died / Ernest Howard Crosby

How He Died

So he died for his faith. That is fine.
   More than most of us do.
But stay; can you add to that line
   That he lived for it too?

It is easy to die. Men have died
   For a wish or a whim --
From bravado, from passion or pride;
   Was it harder for him?

But to live; every day to live out
   All the truth that he dreamt,
While his friends met his conduct with doubt,
   And the world with contempt --

Was it thus that he plodded ahead,
   Never turning aside?
Then we'll talk of the life that he led,
   Never mind how he died.

~~~
Ernest Howard Crosby
from Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable, 1899.

[Poem is in the public domain]

Ernest Howard Crosby biography