Wolfe.
By W. M. MacKeracher
"I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow." - Wolfe, on hearing Gray's "Elegy" read the night before the capture of Quebec.
Thou need'st no marble monuments to keep
Thy fame immortal and thy memory
An inspiration to make pulses leap
And resolution spring to mastery.
Thou need'st no gilded tablets on the walls
Of cities, no imposing sepulchre,
Imperishable Wolfe, whose name recalls
The flower of kings, who bore Excalibur.
The ultimate dispensers of renown,
The poets, shall accord thee honor fit,
And add fresh laurels ever to thy crown,
High-minded hero, who hadst rather writ
Those lines of one to every poet dear
Than take the fortress of a hemisphere.