COURAGE

I'd once a friend — what joy to say!—

Who when he took a holiday

Would climb the towering Dolomites

And strive with Fear upon the heights;

Tied to a rope, down dangling sheer,

He'd talk to God through clouds of Fear.

O give me friends like that, I say,

And such a gallant holiday.

I'd another friend, in another pale,

Who spent a holiday in jail.

He fought for what his heart deemed right,

And they shut him up in walls of night.

Yet merrily his heart did sing

Like a mating bird that hails the Spring.