The Grey Company

By Jessie Mackay

Born 12/15/1864


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,
         The jeering and the 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, alone, 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 marsh-light
         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 a 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.

DayPoems Poem No. 937
<a href="http://www.daypoems.net/poems/937.html">The Grey Company by Jessie Mackay</a>

The DayPoems Poetry Collection, www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor

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