He was a man, and as a man he knew Love, separation, sorrow, joy and death. He was a master of the tricks of war, He gave great strokes and warded strokes as great. He was the prop and pillar of a State, The incarnation of a national dream, And when the State fell and the dream dissolved He must have lived with bitterness itself⁠— But what his sorrow was and what his joy, And how he felt in the expense of strength, And how his heart contained its bitterness, He will not tell us. We can lie about him, Dress up a dummy in his uniform And put our words into the dummy’s mouth, Say “Here Lee must have thought,” and “There, no doubt, By what we know of him, we may suppose He felt⁠—this pang or that⁠—” but he remains Beyond our stagecraft, reticent as ice, Reticent as the fire within the stone.