Words are Deeds.
The words we hear
May revolutionize or rear
A mighty state.
The words we read
May orb a spiritual deed
Excelling any fleshly one,
As much as the celestial sun
Transcends a bonfire, made to throw
A light on some Raree-show.
A simple proverb, tagged with rhyme,
May colour half the course of time;
The pregnant saying of a sage
May influence every coming age;
A song in its effects may be
More glorious than Thermopylae;
While a great Book is in my view
A greater deed than Waterloo,
And many a lay that schoolboys scan
A nobler feat than Inkermann.
[Note: I'm not sure when this poem was first published; Austlit puts it as An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Bertram Stevens (1907). I'd guess it was originally published in an obscure New South Wales newspaper that is yet to be indexed, or was found in the poet's papers after his death in 1868.]
