Analysis of The Volunteer

Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent   
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,   
Thinking that so his days would drift away   
With no lance broken in life’s tournament:   
Yet ever ’twixt the books and his bright eyes         
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,   
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,   
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.   

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;   
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;           
His lance is broken; but he lies content   
With that high hour, in which he lived and died.   
And falling thus he wants no recompense,   
Who found his battle in the last resort;   
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,         
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.