C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Ensign Epps, the Color-Bearer
By John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–1890)
E
Sowed a seed of glory and duty,
That flowers and flames in height and beauty
Like a crimson lily with heart of gold,
To-day, when the wars of Ghent are old,
And buried as deep as their dead commanders.
No matter on which side, Philip or Earl;
Their cause was the shell—his deed was the pearl.
Scarce more than a lad, he had been a sharer
That day in the wildest work of the field.
He was wounded and spent, and the fight was lost;
His comrades were slain, or a scattered host.
He had carried his colors safer than life.
By the river’s brink, without weapon or shield,
He faced the victors. The thick heart-mist
He dashed from his eyes, and the silk he kissed
Ere he held it aloft in the setting sun,
As proudly as if the fight were won;
And he smiled when they ordered him to yield.
Cut the silk from the gilded staff,
Which he poised like a spear till the charge was made,
And hurled at the leader with a laugh.
Then round his breast, like the scarf of his love,
He tied the colors his heart above,
And plunged in his armor into the tide,
And there, in his dress of honor, died.
And what is the text of your proud commanders?
Out of the centuries, heroes reach
With the scroll of a deed, with the word of a story,
Of one man’s truth and of all men’s glory,
Like Ensign Epps at the battle of Flanders.