James McAuley wrote: ‘Valediction: Roy Campbell’
He stood against the leveling stampede
And cracked the stockman’s whip of his polemic;
He never left his friends or slurred his creed
In times when cowardice grew epidemic.
Action he loved, and honour, and the life
Of simple men before machines were master.
He gave a pure devotion to his wife,
And said his rosary amidst disaster.
Contemptuous of the babble of his time,
He loved the Muses with a noble passion,
Catching a golden splendour in his rhyme
When rhyme and splendour both were out of fashion.
Who now shall bring back from our wars a song,
Like Heracles returning with a trophy?
May Christ who calls the singer from the throng
Give stars and music to his heavenly strophe.
