Better than honor and glory, and History's iron pen, Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men.

Gilder contrasts public commemoration—“honor and glory” fixed by “History’s iron pen”—with a quieter, more inward measure of worth: having done one’s duty and acted from love of others. The “iron pen” suggests permanence but also coldness and rigidity, implying that official history can be harsh, selective, or impersonal. Against that, the poem elevates ethical action and humane feeling as a superior legacy, even if they are less celebrated. The lines reflect a late-19th-century moral idealism common in Gilder’s verse and editorial outlook: civic virtue and fellow-feeling outrank fame, and the best memorial is character expressed in service.