This is yet another poem that uses the figure of Robert Gould Shaw to talk about the Fifty-Fourth and their history-making endeavors.In this case the poet asks what it was that caused Shaw to take the risk and "Leave home and kindred and thy spicy loaves/To lead th' unlettered and despised droves."

In the end, Dunbar says "Since thou and those who with thee died for right /Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!" When he wrote it, it was still at a time when it would seem that what these men did was for nought—nothing came of it. Blacks were still being predjudiced against even with Shaw's "giving all to serve the union"

Robert Gould Shaw

--Paul Lawrence Dunbar.(1872-1906)

Why was it that the thunder voice of Fate

Should call thee, studious, from the classic groves,

Where calm-eyed Pallas with still footstep roves,

And charge thee seek the turmoil of the state?

What bade thee hear the voice and rise elate,

Leave home and kindred and thy spicy loaves,

To lead th' unlettered and despised droves

To manhood's home and thunder at the gate?

Far better the slow blaze of Learning's light,

The cool and quiet of her dearer fane,

Than this hot terror of a hopeless fight,

This cold endurance of the final pain,--

Since thou and those who with thee died for right

Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!

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