Historia Infinitus

The following poem was written in 1927 by J. Norman Cameron:
The honours that people give always
Pass to those use-besotted gentlement
Whose numskull courage is a kind of fear,
A fear of thought and of the oafish mothers
(’Or with your shield or on it’) in their rear.
Spartans cannot retreat.  Why, then, their praise
For going forward should be less [...]