We present this work in honor of the Jamaican holiday, National Heroes’ Day.

 

Men of ideas outlive their times
An idea held by such a man does not end with his death
His life bleeding away goes down
Into the earth, and they grow like seed
The idea that is not lost with the waste of a single life
Like seed springing up a multitude.

They hanged Gordon from a boom
Rigged in front of the Court House
They hanged him with eighteen others for company
And Jesus had but two
But the ideas for which Gordon lived
Did not hang with him
And the great social revolution for which Jesus died
Did not die with him
Two men they nailed with Jesus side by side
Eighteen went to hang with Gordon from the new-rigged boom
But the idea of equality and justice with Gordon
Went into the ground and sprung up like seed, a multitude

A hundred years the seed was a-growing in the ground
A hundred years is not too long
A hundred years is not too soon
A hundred years is a time and a season
And all things must wait a time and a season
And the time and the season for each growing thing

Is the way, and there is no other

The time and the season of its growing and bearing fruit

Are inherent in the nature of the seed
And inherent in it is its growth and its fruit

And this is the way and there is no other

A hundred years is not too long

For the seed to burst its husk under the ground

And cleave a path and press upward

And thrust a green blade in triumph at the sun
Do not be anxious for the house that is a-building
For the unsown acres under the plough
For all things await a time and a season.

The dream given to one man in the night

Not night nor darkness can call it back again

They hanged George William Gordon for the dream

He had been given in the night
That he carried in his breast
Thinking to put the dream to death
With the man they put to shameful death
But they give immortality to the dream
That time the man is put to death
For the dream is all
It is all of a man that there is and immortal
And all of immortality of a man there is.

A long time ago they hanged George William Gordon
But not so long ago
A log time ago
They put Jesus on the Cross
But not so long
For all things have a time and a season
A long time ago
The pea doves took the sweetwood seeds
And let them fall on the valley bottoms
That are now the virgin forest of the great backlands
Of new timber, a long time
Were the bare rock-spure growing
That is now a matted forest floor
Where the wild birds took and dropped
The little sweet kernels of the tall timbers
A long time ago, but not so long
For all things have a time and a season
And a hundred years is not too long
And a hundred years is not too soon.
They hanged Gordon with eighteen others
They nailed Jesus between two thieves
But the ideas these men lived for did not die with them
A single grain of corn will yield an ear of corn
And an ear of corn in two generations will sow a field
And these things befall between a moon and a moon
All things await a time and a season
And twice a hundred years is not too long
Or twice a hundred years too soon.