Fair were our visions! Oh, they were as grandAs ever floated out of faerie land;Children were we in single faith,But God-like children, whom nor deathNor threat nor danger drove from honor's path,In the land where we were dreaming.Proud were our men, as pride of birth could render;As violets, our women pure and tender;And when they spoke, their voices did thrillUntil at eve the whip-poor-will,At morn the mocking-bird, were mute and still,In the land where we were dreaming.And we had graves that covered more of gloryThan ever tracked tradition's ancient story;And in our dream we wove the threadOf principles for which had bledAnd suffered long our own immortal dead,In the land where we were dreaming.Though in our land we had both bond and free,Both were content; and so God let them be;Till envy coveted our land,And those fair fields our valor won;But little recked we, for we still slept on,In the land where we were dreaming.Our sleep grew troubled and our dreams grew wild—Red meteors flashed across our heaven's field;Crimson the moon; between the TwinsBarbed arrows fly, and then beginsSuch strife as when disorder's Chaos reigns,In the land where we were dreaming.Down from her sun-lit heights smiled LibertyAnd waved her cap in sign of Victory—The world approved, and everywhere,Except where growled the Russian bear,The good, the brave, the just gave us their prayerIn the land where we were dreaming.We fancied that a Government was ours—We challenged place among the world's great powers;We talked in sleep of Rank, Commission,Until so life-like grew our visionThat he who dared to doubt but met derision,In the land where we were dreaming.We looked on high; a banner there was seen,Whose field was blanched and spotless in its sheen—Chivalry's cross its Union bears,And veterans swearing by their scarsVowed they would bear it through a hundred wars,In the land where we were dreaming.A hero came amongst us as we slept;At first he lowly knelt—then rose and wept;Then gathering up a thousand spearsHe swept across the field of Mars;Then bowed farewell and walked beyond the stars,In the land where we were dreaming.We looked again: another figure stillGave hope, and nerved each individual will—Full of grandeur, clothed with power,Self-poised, erect, he ruled the hourWith stern, majestic sway—of strength a tower,In the land where we were dreaming.As, while great Jove, in bronze, a warder God,Gazed eastward from the Forum where he stood,Rome felt herself secure and free,So, "Richmond's safe," we said, while weBeheld a bronzèd hero—God-like Lee,In the land where we were dreaming.As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls—As wakes the mother when the infant falls—As starts the traveller when aroundHis sleeping couch the fire-bells sound—So woke our nation with a single bound,In the land where we were dreaming.Woe! woe is me! the startled mother cried—While we have slept our noble sons have died!Woe! woe is me! how strange and sadThat all our glorious vision's fled,And left us nothing real but the dead,In the land where we were dreaming.Daniel B. Lucas.
Fair were our visions! Oh, they were as grandAs ever floated out of faerie land;Children were we in single faith,But God-like children, whom nor deathNor threat nor danger drove from honor's path,In the land where we were dreaming.Proud were our men, as pride of birth could render;As violets, our women pure and tender;And when they spoke, their voices did thrillUntil at eve the whip-poor-will,At morn the mocking-bird, were mute and still,In the land where we were dreaming.And we had graves that covered more of gloryThan ever tracked tradition's ancient story;And in our dream we wove the threadOf principles for which had bledAnd suffered long our own immortal dead,In the land where we were dreaming.Though in our land we had both bond and free,Both were content; and so God let them be;Till envy coveted our land,And those fair fields our valor won;But little recked we, for we still slept on,In the land where we were dreaming.Our sleep grew troubled and our dreams grew wild—Red meteors flashed across our heaven's field;Crimson the moon; between the TwinsBarbed arrows fly, and then beginsSuch strife as when disorder's Chaos reigns,In the land where we were dreaming.Down from her sun-lit heights smiled LibertyAnd waved her cap in sign of Victory—The world approved, and everywhere,Except where growled the Russian bear,The good, the brave, the just gave us their prayerIn the land where we were dreaming.We fancied that a Government was ours—We challenged place among the world's great powers;We talked in sleep of Rank, Commission,Until so life-like grew our visionThat he who dared to doubt but met derision,In the land where we were dreaming.We looked on high; a banner there was seen,Whose field was blanched and spotless in its sheen—Chivalry's cross its Union bears,And veterans swearing by their scarsVowed they would bear it through a hundred wars,In the land where we were dreaming.A hero came amongst us as we slept;At first he lowly knelt—then rose and wept;Then gathering up a thousand spearsHe swept across the field of Mars;Then bowed farewell and walked beyond the stars,In the land where we were dreaming.We looked again: another figure stillGave hope, and nerved each individual will—Full of grandeur, clothed with power,Self-poised, erect, he ruled the hourWith stern, majestic sway—of strength a tower,In the land where we were dreaming.As, while great Jove, in bronze, a warder God,Gazed eastward from the Forum where he stood,Rome felt herself secure and free,So, "Richmond's safe," we said, while weBeheld a bronzèd hero—God-like Lee,In the land where we were dreaming.As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls—As wakes the mother when the infant falls—As starts the traveller when aroundHis sleeping couch the fire-bells sound—So woke our nation with a single bound,In the land where we were dreaming.Woe! woe is me! the startled mother cried—While we have slept our noble sons have died!Woe! woe is me! how strange and sadThat all our glorious vision's fled,And left us nothing real but the dead,In the land where we were dreaming.Daniel B. Lucas.
Fair were our visions! Oh, they were as grandAs ever floated out of faerie land;Children were we in single faith,But God-like children, whom nor deathNor threat nor danger drove from honor's path,In the land where we were dreaming.
Proud were our men, as pride of birth could render;As violets, our women pure and tender;And when they spoke, their voices did thrillUntil at eve the whip-poor-will,At morn the mocking-bird, were mute and still,In the land where we were dreaming.
And we had graves that covered more of gloryThan ever tracked tradition's ancient story;And in our dream we wove the threadOf principles for which had bledAnd suffered long our own immortal dead,In the land where we were dreaming.
Though in our land we had both bond and free,Both were content; and so God let them be;Till envy coveted our land,And those fair fields our valor won;But little recked we, for we still slept on,In the land where we were dreaming.
Our sleep grew troubled and our dreams grew wild—Red meteors flashed across our heaven's field;Crimson the moon; between the TwinsBarbed arrows fly, and then beginsSuch strife as when disorder's Chaos reigns,In the land where we were dreaming.
Down from her sun-lit heights smiled LibertyAnd waved her cap in sign of Victory—The world approved, and everywhere,Except where growled the Russian bear,The good, the brave, the just gave us their prayerIn the land where we were dreaming.
We fancied that a Government was ours—We challenged place among the world's great powers;We talked in sleep of Rank, Commission,Until so life-like grew our visionThat he who dared to doubt but met derision,In the land where we were dreaming.
We looked on high; a banner there was seen,Whose field was blanched and spotless in its sheen—Chivalry's cross its Union bears,And veterans swearing by their scarsVowed they would bear it through a hundred wars,In the land where we were dreaming.
A hero came amongst us as we slept;At first he lowly knelt—then rose and wept;Then gathering up a thousand spearsHe swept across the field of Mars;Then bowed farewell and walked beyond the stars,In the land where we were dreaming.
We looked again: another figure stillGave hope, and nerved each individual will—Full of grandeur, clothed with power,Self-poised, erect, he ruled the hourWith stern, majestic sway—of strength a tower,In the land where we were dreaming.
As, while great Jove, in bronze, a warder God,Gazed eastward from the Forum where he stood,Rome felt herself secure and free,So, "Richmond's safe," we said, while weBeheld a bronzèd hero—God-like Lee,In the land where we were dreaming.
As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls—As wakes the mother when the infant falls—As starts the traveller when aroundHis sleeping couch the fire-bells sound—So woke our nation with a single bound,In the land where we were dreaming.
Woe! woe is me! the startled mother cried—While we have slept our noble sons have died!Woe! woe is me! how strange and sadThat all our glorious vision's fled,And left us nothing real but the dead,In the land where we were dreaming.
Daniel B. Lucas.
ACCEPTATION
IWe do accept thee, heavenly Peace!Albeit thou comest in a guiseUnlooked for—undesired, our eyesWelcome through tears the sweet releaseFrom war, and woe, and want,—surcease,For which we bless thee, blessèd Peace!IIWe lift our foreheads from the dust;And as we meet thy brow's clear calm,There falls a freshening sense of balmUpon our spirits. Fear—distrust—The hopeless present on us thrust—We'll meet them as we can, andmust.IIIWar has not wholly wrecked us: stillStrong hands, brave hearts, high souls are ours—Proud consciousness of quenchless powers—A Past whose memory makes us thrill—Futures uncharactered, to fillWith heroisms—if we will.IVThen courage, brothers!—Though each breastFeel oft the rankling thorn, despair,That failure plants so sharply there—No pain, no pang shall be confest:We'll work and watch the brightening west,And leave to God and Heaven the rest.Margaret Junkin Preston.
IWe do accept thee, heavenly Peace!Albeit thou comest in a guiseUnlooked for—undesired, our eyesWelcome through tears the sweet releaseFrom war, and woe, and want,—surcease,For which we bless thee, blessèd Peace!IIWe lift our foreheads from the dust;And as we meet thy brow's clear calm,There falls a freshening sense of balmUpon our spirits. Fear—distrust—The hopeless present on us thrust—We'll meet them as we can, andmust.IIIWar has not wholly wrecked us: stillStrong hands, brave hearts, high souls are ours—Proud consciousness of quenchless powers—A Past whose memory makes us thrill—Futures uncharactered, to fillWith heroisms—if we will.IVThen courage, brothers!—Though each breastFeel oft the rankling thorn, despair,That failure plants so sharply there—No pain, no pang shall be confest:We'll work and watch the brightening west,And leave to God and Heaven the rest.Margaret Junkin Preston.
IWe do accept thee, heavenly Peace!Albeit thou comest in a guiseUnlooked for—undesired, our eyesWelcome through tears the sweet releaseFrom war, and woe, and want,—surcease,For which we bless thee, blessèd Peace!
IIWe lift our foreheads from the dust;And as we meet thy brow's clear calm,There falls a freshening sense of balmUpon our spirits. Fear—distrust—The hopeless present on us thrust—We'll meet them as we can, andmust.
IIIWar has not wholly wrecked us: stillStrong hands, brave hearts, high souls are ours—Proud consciousness of quenchless powers—A Past whose memory makes us thrill—Futures uncharactered, to fillWith heroisms—if we will.
IVThen courage, brothers!—Though each breastFeel oft the rankling thorn, despair,That failure plants so sharply there—No pain, no pang shall be confest:We'll work and watch the brightening west,And leave to God and Heaven the rest.
Margaret Junkin Preston.
THE CONQUERED BANNER
Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary;Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary;Furl it, fold it—it is best;For there's not a man to wave it,And there's not a sword to save it,And there's not one left to lave itIn the blood which heroes gave it;And its foes now scorn and brave it;Furl it, hide it—let it rest!Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;Broken is its staff and shattered,And the valiant hosts are scatteredOver whom it floated high.Oh, 'tis hard for us to fold it,Hard to think there's none to hold it,Hard that those who once unrolled itNow must furl it with a sigh!Furl that Banner—furl it sadly;Once ten thousands hailed it gladly,And ten thousands wildly, madlySwore it should forever wave—Swore that foeman's sword should neverHearts like theirs entwined dissever,And that flag should float foreverO'er their freedom, or their grave!Furl it! for the hands that grasped it,And the hearts that fondly clasped it,Cold and dead are lying low;And that Banner—it is trailing,While around it sounds the wailingOf its people in their woe;For, though conquered, they adore it—Love the cold, dead hands that bore it!Weep for those who fell before it!Pardon those who trailed and tore it!But, oh, wildly they deplore it,Now who furl and fold it so!Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,And 'twill live in song and storyThough its folds are in the dust!For its fame on brightest pages,Penned by poets and by sages,Shall go sounding down the ages—Furl its folds though now we must!Furl that Banner, softly, slowly;Treat it gently—it is holy,For it droops above the dead;Touch it not—unfold it never;Let it droop there, furled forever,—For its people's hopes are fled.Abram J. Ryan.
Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary;Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary;Furl it, fold it—it is best;For there's not a man to wave it,And there's not a sword to save it,And there's not one left to lave itIn the blood which heroes gave it;And its foes now scorn and brave it;Furl it, hide it—let it rest!Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;Broken is its staff and shattered,And the valiant hosts are scatteredOver whom it floated high.Oh, 'tis hard for us to fold it,Hard to think there's none to hold it,Hard that those who once unrolled itNow must furl it with a sigh!Furl that Banner—furl it sadly;Once ten thousands hailed it gladly,And ten thousands wildly, madlySwore it should forever wave—Swore that foeman's sword should neverHearts like theirs entwined dissever,And that flag should float foreverO'er their freedom, or their grave!Furl it! for the hands that grasped it,And the hearts that fondly clasped it,Cold and dead are lying low;And that Banner—it is trailing,While around it sounds the wailingOf its people in their woe;For, though conquered, they adore it—Love the cold, dead hands that bore it!Weep for those who fell before it!Pardon those who trailed and tore it!But, oh, wildly they deplore it,Now who furl and fold it so!Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,And 'twill live in song and storyThough its folds are in the dust!For its fame on brightest pages,Penned by poets and by sages,Shall go sounding down the ages—Furl its folds though now we must!Furl that Banner, softly, slowly;Treat it gently—it is holy,For it droops above the dead;Touch it not—unfold it never;Let it droop there, furled forever,—For its people's hopes are fled.Abram J. Ryan.
Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary;Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary;Furl it, fold it—it is best;For there's not a man to wave it,And there's not a sword to save it,And there's not one left to lave itIn the blood which heroes gave it;And its foes now scorn and brave it;Furl it, hide it—let it rest!
Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;Broken is its staff and shattered,And the valiant hosts are scatteredOver whom it floated high.Oh, 'tis hard for us to fold it,Hard to think there's none to hold it,Hard that those who once unrolled itNow must furl it with a sigh!
Furl that Banner—furl it sadly;Once ten thousands hailed it gladly,And ten thousands wildly, madlySwore it should forever wave—Swore that foeman's sword should neverHearts like theirs entwined dissever,And that flag should float foreverO'er their freedom, or their grave!
Furl it! for the hands that grasped it,And the hearts that fondly clasped it,Cold and dead are lying low;And that Banner—it is trailing,While around it sounds the wailingOf its people in their woe;
For, though conquered, they adore it—Love the cold, dead hands that bore it!Weep for those who fell before it!Pardon those who trailed and tore it!But, oh, wildly they deplore it,Now who furl and fold it so!
Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,And 'twill live in song and storyThough its folds are in the dust!For its fame on brightest pages,Penned by poets and by sages,Shall go sounding down the ages—Furl its folds though now we must!
Furl that Banner, softly, slowly;Treat it gently—it is holy,For it droops above the dead;Touch it not—unfold it never;Let it droop there, furled forever,—For its people's hopes are fled.
Abram J. Ryan.
At the North, too, Peace was welcome. The North, while suffering less poignantly than the South, had drunk deeply of the bitter cup. It had lost over three hundred and fifty thousand men.
At the North, too, Peace was welcome. The North, while suffering less poignantly than the South, had drunk deeply of the bitter cup. It had lost over three hundred and fifty thousand men.
PEACE
Daybreak upon the hills!Slowly, behind the midnight murk and trailOf the long storm, light brightens, pure and pale,And the horizon fills.Not bearing swift release,—Not with quick feet of triumph, but with treadAugust and solemn, following her dead,Cometh, at last, our Peace.Over thick graves grown green,Over pale bones that graveless lie and bleach,Over torn human hearts her path doth reach,And Heaven's dear pity lean.O angel sweet and grand!White-footed, from beside the throne of God,Thou movest, with the palm and olive-rod,And day bespreads the land!His Day we waited for!With faces to the East, we prayed and fought;And a faint music of the dawning caught,All through the sounds of War.Our souls are still with praise!It is the dawning; there is work to do:When we have borne the long hours' burden through,Then we will pæans raise.God give us, with the time,His strength for His large purpose to the world!To bear before Him, in its face unfurled,His gonfalon sublime!Ay, wearestrong! Both sidesThe misty river stretch His army's wings:Heavenward, with glorious wheel, one flank He flings;And one front still abides!Strongest where most bereft!His great ones He doth call to more command.For whom He hath prepared it, they shall standOn the Right Hand and Left!Adeline D. T. Whitney.
Daybreak upon the hills!Slowly, behind the midnight murk and trailOf the long storm, light brightens, pure and pale,And the horizon fills.Not bearing swift release,—Not with quick feet of triumph, but with treadAugust and solemn, following her dead,Cometh, at last, our Peace.Over thick graves grown green,Over pale bones that graveless lie and bleach,Over torn human hearts her path doth reach,And Heaven's dear pity lean.O angel sweet and grand!White-footed, from beside the throne of God,Thou movest, with the palm and olive-rod,And day bespreads the land!His Day we waited for!With faces to the East, we prayed and fought;And a faint music of the dawning caught,All through the sounds of War.Our souls are still with praise!It is the dawning; there is work to do:When we have borne the long hours' burden through,Then we will pæans raise.God give us, with the time,His strength for His large purpose to the world!To bear before Him, in its face unfurled,His gonfalon sublime!Ay, wearestrong! Both sidesThe misty river stretch His army's wings:Heavenward, with glorious wheel, one flank He flings;And one front still abides!Strongest where most bereft!His great ones He doth call to more command.For whom He hath prepared it, they shall standOn the Right Hand and Left!Adeline D. T. Whitney.
Daybreak upon the hills!Slowly, behind the midnight murk and trailOf the long storm, light brightens, pure and pale,And the horizon fills.
Not bearing swift release,—Not with quick feet of triumph, but with treadAugust and solemn, following her dead,Cometh, at last, our Peace.
Over thick graves grown green,Over pale bones that graveless lie and bleach,Over torn human hearts her path doth reach,And Heaven's dear pity lean.
O angel sweet and grand!White-footed, from beside the throne of God,Thou movest, with the palm and olive-rod,And day bespreads the land!
His Day we waited for!With faces to the East, we prayed and fought;And a faint music of the dawning caught,All through the sounds of War.
Our souls are still with praise!It is the dawning; there is work to do:When we have borne the long hours' burden through,Then we will pæans raise.
God give us, with the time,His strength for His large purpose to the world!To bear before Him, in its face unfurled,His gonfalon sublime!
Ay, wearestrong! Both sidesThe misty river stretch His army's wings:Heavenward, with glorious wheel, one flank He flings;And one front still abides!
Strongest where most bereft!His great ones He doth call to more command.For whom He hath prepared it, they shall standOn the Right Hand and Left!
Adeline D. T. Whitney.
PEACE
O Land, of every land the best—O Land, whose glory shall increase;Now in your whitest raiment drestFor the great festival of Peace:Take from your flag its fold of gloom,And let it float undimmed above,Till over all our vales shall bloomThe sacred colors that we love.On mountain high, in valley low,Set Freedom's living fires to burn;Until the midnight sky shall showA redder pathway than the morn.Welcome, with shouts of joy and pride,Your veterans from the war-path's track;You gave your boys, untrained, untried;You bring them men and heroes back!And shed no tear, though think you mustWith sorrow of the martyred band;Not even for him whose hallowed dustHas made our prairies holy land.Though by the places where they fell,The places that are sacred ground,Death, like a sullen sentinel,Paces his everlasting round.Yet when they set their country freeAnd gave her traitors fitting doom,They left their last great enemy,Baffled, beside an empty tomb.Not there, but risen, redeemed, they goWhere all the paths are sweet with flowers;They fought to give us Peace and lo!They gained a better Peace than ours.Phœbe Cary.
O Land, of every land the best—O Land, whose glory shall increase;Now in your whitest raiment drestFor the great festival of Peace:Take from your flag its fold of gloom,And let it float undimmed above,Till over all our vales shall bloomThe sacred colors that we love.On mountain high, in valley low,Set Freedom's living fires to burn;Until the midnight sky shall showA redder pathway than the morn.Welcome, with shouts of joy and pride,Your veterans from the war-path's track;You gave your boys, untrained, untried;You bring them men and heroes back!And shed no tear, though think you mustWith sorrow of the martyred band;Not even for him whose hallowed dustHas made our prairies holy land.Though by the places where they fell,The places that are sacred ground,Death, like a sullen sentinel,Paces his everlasting round.Yet when they set their country freeAnd gave her traitors fitting doom,They left their last great enemy,Baffled, beside an empty tomb.Not there, but risen, redeemed, they goWhere all the paths are sweet with flowers;They fought to give us Peace and lo!They gained a better Peace than ours.Phœbe Cary.
O Land, of every land the best—O Land, whose glory shall increase;Now in your whitest raiment drestFor the great festival of Peace:
Take from your flag its fold of gloom,And let it float undimmed above,Till over all our vales shall bloomThe sacred colors that we love.
On mountain high, in valley low,Set Freedom's living fires to burn;Until the midnight sky shall showA redder pathway than the morn.
Welcome, with shouts of joy and pride,Your veterans from the war-path's track;You gave your boys, untrained, untried;You bring them men and heroes back!
And shed no tear, though think you mustWith sorrow of the martyred band;Not even for him whose hallowed dustHas made our prairies holy land.
Though by the places where they fell,The places that are sacred ground,Death, like a sullen sentinel,Paces his everlasting round.
Yet when they set their country freeAnd gave her traitors fitting doom,They left their last great enemy,Baffled, beside an empty tomb.
Not there, but risen, redeemed, they goWhere all the paths are sweet with flowers;They fought to give us Peace and lo!They gained a better Peace than ours.
Phœbe Cary.
On May 24, 1865, the united armies of Grant and Sherman, two hundred thousand strong, were reviewed at Washington by President Johnson and his cabinet.
On May 24, 1865, the united armies of Grant and Sherman, two hundred thousand strong, were reviewed at Washington by President Johnson and his cabinet.
A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY
[May 24, 1865]
I read last night of the Grand ReviewIn Washington's chiefest avenue,—Two hundred thousand men in blue,I think they said was the number,—Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,The cheers of people who came to greet,And the thousand details that to repeatWould only my verse encumber,—Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet,And then to a fitful slumber.When, lo! in a vision I seemed to standIn the lonely Capitol. On each handFar stretched the portico, dim and grandIts columns ranged, like a martial bandOf sheeted spectres, whom some commandHad called to a last reviewing.And the streets of the city were white and bare;No footfall echoed across the square;But out of the misty midnight airI heard in the distance a trumpet blare,And the wandering night-winds seemed to bearThe sound of a far tattooing.Then I held my breath with fear and dread;For into the square, with a brazen tread,There rode a figure whose stately headO'erlooked the review that morning,That never bowed from its firm-set seatWhen the living column passed its feet,Yet now rode steadily up the streetTo the phantom bugle's warning:Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,And there in the moonlight stood revealedA well-known form that in State and fieldHad led our patriot sires:Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,Afar through the river's fog and damp,That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,Nor wasted bivouac fires.And I saw a phantom army come,With never a sound of fife or drum,But keeping time to a throbbing humOf wailing and lamentation:The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,The men whose wasted figures fillThe patriot graves of the nation.And there came the nameless dead,—the menWho perished in fever-swamp and fen,The slowly-starved of the prison-pen;And, marching beside the others,Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:I thought—perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight—They looked as white as their brothers!And so all night marched the Nation's dead,With never a banner above them spread,Nor a badge, nor a motto brandishèd;No mark—save the bare uncovered headOf the silent bronze Reviewer;With never an arch save the vaulted sky;With never a flower save those that lieOn the distant graves—for love could buyNo gift that was purer or truer.So all night long swept the strange array;So all night long, till the morning gray,I watch'd for one who had passed away,With a reverent awe and wonder,—Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line,And I knew that one who was kin of mineHad come; and I spake—and lo! that signAwakened me from my slumber.Bret Harte.
I read last night of the Grand ReviewIn Washington's chiefest avenue,—Two hundred thousand men in blue,I think they said was the number,—Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,The cheers of people who came to greet,And the thousand details that to repeatWould only my verse encumber,—Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet,And then to a fitful slumber.When, lo! in a vision I seemed to standIn the lonely Capitol. On each handFar stretched the portico, dim and grandIts columns ranged, like a martial bandOf sheeted spectres, whom some commandHad called to a last reviewing.And the streets of the city were white and bare;No footfall echoed across the square;But out of the misty midnight airI heard in the distance a trumpet blare,And the wandering night-winds seemed to bearThe sound of a far tattooing.Then I held my breath with fear and dread;For into the square, with a brazen tread,There rode a figure whose stately headO'erlooked the review that morning,That never bowed from its firm-set seatWhen the living column passed its feet,Yet now rode steadily up the streetTo the phantom bugle's warning:Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,And there in the moonlight stood revealedA well-known form that in State and fieldHad led our patriot sires:Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,Afar through the river's fog and damp,That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,Nor wasted bivouac fires.And I saw a phantom army come,With never a sound of fife or drum,But keeping time to a throbbing humOf wailing and lamentation:The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,The men whose wasted figures fillThe patriot graves of the nation.And there came the nameless dead,—the menWho perished in fever-swamp and fen,The slowly-starved of the prison-pen;And, marching beside the others,Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:I thought—perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight—They looked as white as their brothers!And so all night marched the Nation's dead,With never a banner above them spread,Nor a badge, nor a motto brandishèd;No mark—save the bare uncovered headOf the silent bronze Reviewer;With never an arch save the vaulted sky;With never a flower save those that lieOn the distant graves—for love could buyNo gift that was purer or truer.So all night long swept the strange array;So all night long, till the morning gray,I watch'd for one who had passed away,With a reverent awe and wonder,—Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line,And I knew that one who was kin of mineHad come; and I spake—and lo! that signAwakened me from my slumber.Bret Harte.
I read last night of the Grand ReviewIn Washington's chiefest avenue,—Two hundred thousand men in blue,I think they said was the number,—Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,The cheers of people who came to greet,And the thousand details that to repeatWould only my verse encumber,—Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet,And then to a fitful slumber.
When, lo! in a vision I seemed to standIn the lonely Capitol. On each handFar stretched the portico, dim and grandIts columns ranged, like a martial bandOf sheeted spectres, whom some commandHad called to a last reviewing.And the streets of the city were white and bare;No footfall echoed across the square;But out of the misty midnight airI heard in the distance a trumpet blare,And the wandering night-winds seemed to bearThe sound of a far tattooing.
Then I held my breath with fear and dread;For into the square, with a brazen tread,There rode a figure whose stately headO'erlooked the review that morning,That never bowed from its firm-set seatWhen the living column passed its feet,Yet now rode steadily up the streetTo the phantom bugle's warning:
Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,And there in the moonlight stood revealedA well-known form that in State and fieldHad led our patriot sires:Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,Afar through the river's fog and damp,That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,Nor wasted bivouac fires.
And I saw a phantom army come,With never a sound of fife or drum,But keeping time to a throbbing humOf wailing and lamentation:The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,The men whose wasted figures fillThe patriot graves of the nation.
And there came the nameless dead,—the menWho perished in fever-swamp and fen,The slowly-starved of the prison-pen;And, marching beside the others,Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:I thought—perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight—They looked as white as their brothers!
And so all night marched the Nation's dead,With never a banner above them spread,Nor a badge, nor a motto brandishèd;No mark—save the bare uncovered headOf the silent bronze Reviewer;With never an arch save the vaulted sky;With never a flower save those that lieOn the distant graves—for love could buyNo gift that was purer or truer.
So all night long swept the strange array;So all night long, till the morning gray,I watch'd for one who had passed away,With a reverent awe and wonder,—Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line,And I knew that one who was kin of mineHad come; and I spake—and lo! that signAwakened me from my slumber.
Bret Harte.
The work of disbandment began at once, and the troops were sent home as rapidly as possible; they laid by the musket, took up the spade or hammer, and returned once more to the occupations of peace.
The work of disbandment began at once, and the troops were sent home as rapidly as possible; they laid by the musket, took up the spade or hammer, and returned once more to the occupations of peace.
WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME
When Johnny comes marching home again,Hurrah! hurrah!We'll give him a hearty welcome then,Hurrah! hurrah!The men will cheer, the boys will shout,The ladies, they will all turn out,And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.The old church-bell will peal with joy,Hurrah! hurrah!To welcome home our darling boy,Hurrah! hurrah!The village lads and lasses say,With roses they will strew the way;And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.Get ready for the jubilee,Hurrah! hurrah!We'll give the hero three times three,Hurrah! hurrah!The laurel-wreath is ready nowTo place upon his loyal brow,And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.Let love and friendship on that day,Hurrah! hurrah!Their choicest treasures then display,Hurrah! hurrah!And let each one perform some part,To fill with joy the warrior's heart;And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore.
When Johnny comes marching home again,Hurrah! hurrah!We'll give him a hearty welcome then,Hurrah! hurrah!The men will cheer, the boys will shout,The ladies, they will all turn out,And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.The old church-bell will peal with joy,Hurrah! hurrah!To welcome home our darling boy,Hurrah! hurrah!The village lads and lasses say,With roses they will strew the way;And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.Get ready for the jubilee,Hurrah! hurrah!We'll give the hero three times three,Hurrah! hurrah!The laurel-wreath is ready nowTo place upon his loyal brow,And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.Let love and friendship on that day,Hurrah! hurrah!Their choicest treasures then display,Hurrah! hurrah!And let each one perform some part,To fill with joy the warrior's heart;And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore.
When Johnny comes marching home again,Hurrah! hurrah!We'll give him a hearty welcome then,Hurrah! hurrah!The men will cheer, the boys will shout,The ladies, they will all turn out,And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.
The old church-bell will peal with joy,Hurrah! hurrah!To welcome home our darling boy,Hurrah! hurrah!The village lads and lasses say,With roses they will strew the way;And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.
Get ready for the jubilee,Hurrah! hurrah!We'll give the hero three times three,Hurrah! hurrah!The laurel-wreath is ready nowTo place upon his loyal brow,And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.
Let love and friendship on that day,Hurrah! hurrah!Their choicest treasures then display,Hurrah! hurrah!And let each one perform some part,To fill with joy the warrior's heart;And we'll all feel gay,When Johnny comes marching home.
Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore.
DRIVING HOME THE COWS
Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass,He turned them into the river-lane;One after another he let them pass,Then fastened the meadow-bars again.Under the willows, and over the hill,He patiently followed their sober pace;The merry whistle for once was still,And something shadowed the sunny face.Only a boy! and his father had saidHe never could let his youngest go:Two already were lying deadUnder the feet of the trampling foe.But after the evening work was done,And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,Over his shoulder he slung his gun,And stealthily followed the foot-path damp,Across the clover, and through the wheat,With resolute heart and purpose grim,Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet,And the blind bat's flitting startled him.Thrice since then had the lanes been white,And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;And now, when the cows came back at night,The feeble father drove them home.For news had come to the lonely farmThat three were lying where two had lain;And the old man's tremulous, palsied armCould never lean on a son's again.The summer day grew cold and late.He went for the cows when the work was done;But down the lane, as he opened the gate,He saw them coming, one by one,—Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,Shaking their horns in the evening wind;Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,—But who was it following close behind?Loosely swung in the idle airThe empty sleeve of army blue;And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,Looked out a face that the father knew.For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,And yield their dead unto life again;And the day that comes with a cloudy dawnIn golden glory at last may wane.The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb;And under the silent evening skies,Together they followed the cattle home.Kate Putnam Osgood.
Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass,He turned them into the river-lane;One after another he let them pass,Then fastened the meadow-bars again.Under the willows, and over the hill,He patiently followed their sober pace;The merry whistle for once was still,And something shadowed the sunny face.Only a boy! and his father had saidHe never could let his youngest go:Two already were lying deadUnder the feet of the trampling foe.But after the evening work was done,And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,Over his shoulder he slung his gun,And stealthily followed the foot-path damp,Across the clover, and through the wheat,With resolute heart and purpose grim,Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet,And the blind bat's flitting startled him.Thrice since then had the lanes been white,And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;And now, when the cows came back at night,The feeble father drove them home.For news had come to the lonely farmThat three were lying where two had lain;And the old man's tremulous, palsied armCould never lean on a son's again.The summer day grew cold and late.He went for the cows when the work was done;But down the lane, as he opened the gate,He saw them coming, one by one,—Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,Shaking their horns in the evening wind;Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,—But who was it following close behind?Loosely swung in the idle airThe empty sleeve of army blue;And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,Looked out a face that the father knew.For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,And yield their dead unto life again;And the day that comes with a cloudy dawnIn golden glory at last may wane.The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb;And under the silent evening skies,Together they followed the cattle home.Kate Putnam Osgood.
Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass,He turned them into the river-lane;One after another he let them pass,Then fastened the meadow-bars again.
Under the willows, and over the hill,He patiently followed their sober pace;The merry whistle for once was still,And something shadowed the sunny face.
Only a boy! and his father had saidHe never could let his youngest go:Two already were lying deadUnder the feet of the trampling foe.
But after the evening work was done,And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,Over his shoulder he slung his gun,And stealthily followed the foot-path damp,
Across the clover, and through the wheat,With resolute heart and purpose grim,Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet,And the blind bat's flitting startled him.
Thrice since then had the lanes been white,And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;And now, when the cows came back at night,The feeble father drove them home.
For news had come to the lonely farmThat three were lying where two had lain;And the old man's tremulous, palsied armCould never lean on a son's again.
The summer day grew cold and late.He went for the cows when the work was done;But down the lane, as he opened the gate,He saw them coming, one by one,—
Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,Shaking their horns in the evening wind;Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,—But who was it following close behind?
Loosely swung in the idle airThe empty sleeve of army blue;And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,Looked out a face that the father knew.
For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,And yield their dead unto life again;And the day that comes with a cloudy dawnIn golden glory at last may wane.
The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb;And under the silent evening skies,Together they followed the cattle home.
Kate Putnam Osgood.
On July 21, 1865, services were held at Cambridge, Mass., in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College. Addresses were made by General Meade and General Devens, and an ode written for the occasion was read by James Russell Lowell. This ode, perhaps the greatest ever delivered in America, forms a fitting close to the history of the Civil War.
On July 21, 1865, services were held at Cambridge, Mass., in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College. Addresses were made by General Meade and General Devens, and an ode written for the occasion was read by James Russell Lowell. This ode, perhaps the greatest ever delivered in America, forms a fitting close to the history of the Civil War.
ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION
[July 21, 1865]
IWeak-winged is song,Nor aims at that clear-ethered heightWhither the brave deed climbs for light:We seem to do them wrong,Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearseWho in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,Our trivial song to honor those who comeWith ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,A gracious memory to buoy up and saveFrom Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common graveOf the unventurous throng.IITo-day our Reverend Mother welcomes backHer wisest Scholars, those who understoodThe deeper teaching of her mystic tome,And offered their fresh lives to make it good:No lore of Greece or Rome,No science peddling with the names of things,Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,Can lift our life with wingsFar from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,And lengthen out our datesWith that clear fame whose memory singsIn manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!Not such the trumpet-callOf thy diviner mood,That could thy sons enticeFrom happy homes and toils, the fruitful nestOf those half-virtues which the world calls best,Into War's tumult rude;But rather far that stern deviceThe sponsors chose that round thy cradle stoodIn the dim, unventured wood,TheVeritasthat lurks beneathThe letter's unprolific sheath,Life of whate'er makes life worth living,Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.IIIMany loved Truth, and lavished life's best oilAmid the dust of books to find her,Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.Many in sad faith sought for her,Many with crossed hands sighed for her;But these, our brothers, fought for her,At life's dear peril wrought for her,So loved her that they died for her,Tasting the raptured fleetnessOf her divine completeness:Their higher instinct knewThose love her best who to themselves are true,And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;They followed her and found herWhere all may hope to find,Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.Where faith made whole with deedBreathes its awakening breathInto the lifeless creed,They saw her plumed and mailed,With sweet, stern face unveiled,And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.IVOur slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?Is earth too poor to give usSomething to live for here that shall outlive us?Some more substantial boonThan such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?The little that we seeFrom doubt is never free;The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss,Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,After our little hour of strut and rave,With all our pasteboard passions and desires,Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,For in our likeness still we shape our fate.Ah, there is something hereUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer,Something that gives our feeble lightA high immunity from Night,Something that leaps life's narrow barsTo claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;A seed of sunshine that can leavenOur earthy dulness with the beams of starsAnd glorify our clayWith light from fountains elder than the Day;A conscience more divine than we,A gladness fed with secret tears,A vexing, forward-reaching senseOf some more noble permanence;A light across the sea,Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.VWhither leads the pathTo ampler fates that leads?Not down through flowery meads,To reap an aftermathOf youth's vainglorious weeds,But up the steep, amid the wrathAnd shock of deadly-hostile creeds,Where the world's best hope and stayBy battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,Ere yet the sharp, decisive wordLight the black lips of cannon, and the swordDreams in its easeful sheath;But some day the live coal behind the thought,Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,Or from the shrine sereneOf God's pure altar brought,Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and penLearns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:Some day the soft Ideal that we wooedConfronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"Life may be given in many ways,And loyalty to Truth be sealedAs bravely in the closet as the field,So bountiful is Fate;But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and not to yield,This shows, methinks, God's planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old heroic breeds,Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,Fed from within with all the strength he needs.VISuch was he, our Martyr-Chief,Whom late the Nation he had led,With ashes on her head,Wept with the passion of an angry grief:Forgive me, if from present things I turnTo speak what in my heart will beat and burn,And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote:For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,And, choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and trueHow beautiful to seeOnce more a shepherd of mankind indeed,Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,Not lured by any cheat of birth,But by his clear-grained human worth,And brave old wisdom of sincerity!They knew that outward grace is dust;They could not choose but trustIn that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,And supple-tempered willThat bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.His was no lonely mountain-peak of mindThrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars,Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and PeerCould Nature's equal scheme defaceAnd thwart her genial will;Here was a type of the true elder race,And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.I praise him not; it were too late;And some innative weakness there must beIn him who condescends to victorySuch as the Present gives, and cannot wait,Safe in himself as in a fate.So always firmly he:He knew to bide his time,And can his fame abide,Still patient in his simple faith sublime,Till the wise years decide.Great captains, with their guns and drums,Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,New birth of our new soil, the first American.VIILong as man's hope insatiate can discernOr only guess some more inspiring goalOutside of Self, enduring as the pole,Along whose course the flying axles burnOf spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;Long as below we cannot findThe meed that stills the inexorable mind;So long this faith to some ideal Good,Under whatever mortal names it masks,Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal moodThat thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,Feeling its challenged pulses leap,While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,Shall win man's praise and woman's love,Shall be a wisdom that we set aboveAll other skills and gifts to culture dear,A virtue round whose forehead we inwreatheLaurels that with a living passion breatheWhen other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,And seal these hours the noblest of our year,Save that our brothers found this better way?VIIIWe sit here in the Promised LandThat flows with Freedom's honey and milk;But 'twas they won it, sword in hand,Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.We welcome back our bravest and our best;—Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,Who went forth brave and bright as any here!I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,But the sad strings complain,And will not please the ear:I sweep them for a pæan, but they waneAgain and yet againInto a dirge, and die away, in pain.In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:Fitlier may others greet the living,For me the past is unforgiving;I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not by the way;Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;No ban of endless night exiles the brave;And to the saner mindWe rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack;I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track;In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration;They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!IXBut is there hope to saveEven this ethereal essence from the grave?What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrongSave a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?Before my musing eyeThe mighty ones of old sweep by,Disvoicèd now and insubstantial things,As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,And many races, nameless long ago,To darkness driven by that imperious gustOf ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:O visionary world, condition strange,Where naught abiding is but only Change,Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!Shall we to more continuance make pretence?Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;And, bit by bit,The cunning years steal all from us but woe;Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.But, when we vanish hence,Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,Save to make green their little length of sods,Or deepen pansies for a year or two,Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?Was dying all they had the skill to do?That were not fruitless: but the Soul resentsSuch short-lived service, as if blind eventsRuled without her, or earth could so endure;She claims a more divine investitureOf longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,Gives eyes to mountains blind,Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,And her clear trump sings succor everywhereBy lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;For soul inherits all that soul could dare:Yea, Manhood hath a wider spanAnd larger privilege of life than man.The single deed, the private sacrifice,So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,Is covered up erelong from mortal eyesWith thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;But that high privilege that makes all men peers,That leap of heart whereby a people riseUp to a noble anger's height,And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,That swift validity in noble veins,Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,Of being set on flameBy the pure fire that flies all contact base,But wraps its chosen with angelic might,These are imperishable gains,Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,These hold great futures in their lusty reinsAnd certify to earth a new imperial race.XWho now shall sneer?Who dare again to say we traceOur lines to a plebeian race?Roundhead and Cavalier!Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,They flit across the ear:That is best blood that hath most iron in 't.To edge resolve with, pouring without stintFor what makes manhood dear.Tell us not of Plantagenets,Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawlDown from some victor in a border-brawl!How poor their outworn coronets,Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreathOur brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,Through whose desert a rescued Nation setsHer heel on treason, and the trumpet hearsShout victory, tingling Europe's sullen earsWith vain resentments and more vain regrets!XINot in anger, not in pride,Pure from passion's mixture rudeEver to base earth allied,But with far-heard gratitude,Still with heart and voice renewed,To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,The strain should close that consecrates our brave.Lift the heart and lift the head!Lofty be its mood and grave,Not without a martial ring,Not without a prouder treadAnd a peal of exultation:Little right has he to singThrough whose heart in such an hourBeats no march of conscious power,Sweeps no tumult of elation!'Tis no Man we celebrate,By his country's victories great,A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,But the pith and marrow of a NationDrawing force from all her men,Highest, humblest, weakest, all,For her time of need, and thenPulsing it again through them,Till the basest can no longer cower.Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower!How could poet ever tower,If his passions, hopes, and fears,If his triumphs and his tears,Kept not measure with his people?Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!And from every mountain-peak,Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,And so leap on in light from sea to sea,Till the glad news be sentAcross a kindling continent,Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,She of the open soul and open door,With room about her hearth for all mankind!The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,And bids her navies, that so lately hurledTheir crashing battle, hold their thunders in,Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.No challenge sends she to the elder world.That looked askance and hated; a light scornPlays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty kneesShe calls her children back, and waits the mornOf nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."XIIBow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!No poorest in thy borders but may nowLift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee,But ask whatever else, and we will dare!James Russell Lowell.
IWeak-winged is song,Nor aims at that clear-ethered heightWhither the brave deed climbs for light:We seem to do them wrong,Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearseWho in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,Our trivial song to honor those who comeWith ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,A gracious memory to buoy up and saveFrom Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common graveOf the unventurous throng.IITo-day our Reverend Mother welcomes backHer wisest Scholars, those who understoodThe deeper teaching of her mystic tome,And offered their fresh lives to make it good:No lore of Greece or Rome,No science peddling with the names of things,Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,Can lift our life with wingsFar from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,And lengthen out our datesWith that clear fame whose memory singsIn manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!Not such the trumpet-callOf thy diviner mood,That could thy sons enticeFrom happy homes and toils, the fruitful nestOf those half-virtues which the world calls best,Into War's tumult rude;But rather far that stern deviceThe sponsors chose that round thy cradle stoodIn the dim, unventured wood,TheVeritasthat lurks beneathThe letter's unprolific sheath,Life of whate'er makes life worth living,Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.IIIMany loved Truth, and lavished life's best oilAmid the dust of books to find her,Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.Many in sad faith sought for her,Many with crossed hands sighed for her;But these, our brothers, fought for her,At life's dear peril wrought for her,So loved her that they died for her,Tasting the raptured fleetnessOf her divine completeness:Their higher instinct knewThose love her best who to themselves are true,And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;They followed her and found herWhere all may hope to find,Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.Where faith made whole with deedBreathes its awakening breathInto the lifeless creed,They saw her plumed and mailed,With sweet, stern face unveiled,And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.IVOur slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?Is earth too poor to give usSomething to live for here that shall outlive us?Some more substantial boonThan such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?The little that we seeFrom doubt is never free;The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss,Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,After our little hour of strut and rave,With all our pasteboard passions and desires,Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,For in our likeness still we shape our fate.Ah, there is something hereUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer,Something that gives our feeble lightA high immunity from Night,Something that leaps life's narrow barsTo claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;A seed of sunshine that can leavenOur earthy dulness with the beams of starsAnd glorify our clayWith light from fountains elder than the Day;A conscience more divine than we,A gladness fed with secret tears,A vexing, forward-reaching senseOf some more noble permanence;A light across the sea,Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.VWhither leads the pathTo ampler fates that leads?Not down through flowery meads,To reap an aftermathOf youth's vainglorious weeds,But up the steep, amid the wrathAnd shock of deadly-hostile creeds,Where the world's best hope and stayBy battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,Ere yet the sharp, decisive wordLight the black lips of cannon, and the swordDreams in its easeful sheath;But some day the live coal behind the thought,Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,Or from the shrine sereneOf God's pure altar brought,Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and penLearns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:Some day the soft Ideal that we wooedConfronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"Life may be given in many ways,And loyalty to Truth be sealedAs bravely in the closet as the field,So bountiful is Fate;But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and not to yield,This shows, methinks, God's planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old heroic breeds,Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,Fed from within with all the strength he needs.VISuch was he, our Martyr-Chief,Whom late the Nation he had led,With ashes on her head,Wept with the passion of an angry grief:Forgive me, if from present things I turnTo speak what in my heart will beat and burn,And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote:For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,And, choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and trueHow beautiful to seeOnce more a shepherd of mankind indeed,Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,Not lured by any cheat of birth,But by his clear-grained human worth,And brave old wisdom of sincerity!They knew that outward grace is dust;They could not choose but trustIn that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,And supple-tempered willThat bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.His was no lonely mountain-peak of mindThrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars,Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and PeerCould Nature's equal scheme defaceAnd thwart her genial will;Here was a type of the true elder race,And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.I praise him not; it were too late;And some innative weakness there must beIn him who condescends to victorySuch as the Present gives, and cannot wait,Safe in himself as in a fate.So always firmly he:He knew to bide his time,And can his fame abide,Still patient in his simple faith sublime,Till the wise years decide.Great captains, with their guns and drums,Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,New birth of our new soil, the first American.VIILong as man's hope insatiate can discernOr only guess some more inspiring goalOutside of Self, enduring as the pole,Along whose course the flying axles burnOf spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;Long as below we cannot findThe meed that stills the inexorable mind;So long this faith to some ideal Good,Under whatever mortal names it masks,Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal moodThat thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,Feeling its challenged pulses leap,While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,Shall win man's praise and woman's love,Shall be a wisdom that we set aboveAll other skills and gifts to culture dear,A virtue round whose forehead we inwreatheLaurels that with a living passion breatheWhen other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,And seal these hours the noblest of our year,Save that our brothers found this better way?VIIIWe sit here in the Promised LandThat flows with Freedom's honey and milk;But 'twas they won it, sword in hand,Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.We welcome back our bravest and our best;—Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,Who went forth brave and bright as any here!I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,But the sad strings complain,And will not please the ear:I sweep them for a pæan, but they waneAgain and yet againInto a dirge, and die away, in pain.In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:Fitlier may others greet the living,For me the past is unforgiving;I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not by the way;Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;No ban of endless night exiles the brave;And to the saner mindWe rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack;I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track;In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration;They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!IXBut is there hope to saveEven this ethereal essence from the grave?What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrongSave a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?Before my musing eyeThe mighty ones of old sweep by,Disvoicèd now and insubstantial things,As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,And many races, nameless long ago,To darkness driven by that imperious gustOf ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:O visionary world, condition strange,Where naught abiding is but only Change,Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!Shall we to more continuance make pretence?Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;And, bit by bit,The cunning years steal all from us but woe;Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.But, when we vanish hence,Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,Save to make green their little length of sods,Or deepen pansies for a year or two,Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?Was dying all they had the skill to do?That were not fruitless: but the Soul resentsSuch short-lived service, as if blind eventsRuled without her, or earth could so endure;She claims a more divine investitureOf longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,Gives eyes to mountains blind,Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,And her clear trump sings succor everywhereBy lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;For soul inherits all that soul could dare:Yea, Manhood hath a wider spanAnd larger privilege of life than man.The single deed, the private sacrifice,So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,Is covered up erelong from mortal eyesWith thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;But that high privilege that makes all men peers,That leap of heart whereby a people riseUp to a noble anger's height,And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,That swift validity in noble veins,Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,Of being set on flameBy the pure fire that flies all contact base,But wraps its chosen with angelic might,These are imperishable gains,Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,These hold great futures in their lusty reinsAnd certify to earth a new imperial race.XWho now shall sneer?Who dare again to say we traceOur lines to a plebeian race?Roundhead and Cavalier!Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,They flit across the ear:That is best blood that hath most iron in 't.To edge resolve with, pouring without stintFor what makes manhood dear.Tell us not of Plantagenets,Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawlDown from some victor in a border-brawl!How poor their outworn coronets,Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreathOur brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,Through whose desert a rescued Nation setsHer heel on treason, and the trumpet hearsShout victory, tingling Europe's sullen earsWith vain resentments and more vain regrets!XINot in anger, not in pride,Pure from passion's mixture rudeEver to base earth allied,But with far-heard gratitude,Still with heart and voice renewed,To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,The strain should close that consecrates our brave.Lift the heart and lift the head!Lofty be its mood and grave,Not without a martial ring,Not without a prouder treadAnd a peal of exultation:Little right has he to singThrough whose heart in such an hourBeats no march of conscious power,Sweeps no tumult of elation!'Tis no Man we celebrate,By his country's victories great,A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,But the pith and marrow of a NationDrawing force from all her men,Highest, humblest, weakest, all,For her time of need, and thenPulsing it again through them,Till the basest can no longer cower.Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower!How could poet ever tower,If his passions, hopes, and fears,If his triumphs and his tears,Kept not measure with his people?Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!And from every mountain-peak,Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,And so leap on in light from sea to sea,Till the glad news be sentAcross a kindling continent,Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,She of the open soul and open door,With room about her hearth for all mankind!The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,And bids her navies, that so lately hurledTheir crashing battle, hold their thunders in,Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.No challenge sends she to the elder world.That looked askance and hated; a light scornPlays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty kneesShe calls her children back, and waits the mornOf nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."XIIBow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!No poorest in thy borders but may nowLift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee,But ask whatever else, and we will dare!James Russell Lowell.
IWeak-winged is song,Nor aims at that clear-ethered heightWhither the brave deed climbs for light:We seem to do them wrong,Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearseWho in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,Our trivial song to honor those who comeWith ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,A gracious memory to buoy up and saveFrom Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common graveOf the unventurous throng.
IITo-day our Reverend Mother welcomes backHer wisest Scholars, those who understoodThe deeper teaching of her mystic tome,And offered their fresh lives to make it good:No lore of Greece or Rome,No science peddling with the names of things,Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,Can lift our life with wingsFar from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,And lengthen out our datesWith that clear fame whose memory singsIn manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!Not such the trumpet-callOf thy diviner mood,That could thy sons enticeFrom happy homes and toils, the fruitful nestOf those half-virtues which the world calls best,Into War's tumult rude;But rather far that stern deviceThe sponsors chose that round thy cradle stoodIn the dim, unventured wood,TheVeritasthat lurks beneathThe letter's unprolific sheath,Life of whate'er makes life worth living,Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
IIIMany loved Truth, and lavished life's best oilAmid the dust of books to find her,Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.Many in sad faith sought for her,Many with crossed hands sighed for her;But these, our brothers, fought for her,At life's dear peril wrought for her,So loved her that they died for her,Tasting the raptured fleetnessOf her divine completeness:Their higher instinct knewThose love her best who to themselves are true,And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;They followed her and found herWhere all may hope to find,Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.Where faith made whole with deedBreathes its awakening breathInto the lifeless creed,They saw her plumed and mailed,With sweet, stern face unveiled,And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
IVOur slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?Is earth too poor to give usSomething to live for here that shall outlive us?Some more substantial boonThan such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?The little that we seeFrom doubt is never free;The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss,Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,After our little hour of strut and rave,With all our pasteboard passions and desires,Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,For in our likeness still we shape our fate.Ah, there is something hereUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer,Something that gives our feeble lightA high immunity from Night,Something that leaps life's narrow barsTo claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;A seed of sunshine that can leavenOur earthy dulness with the beams of starsAnd glorify our clayWith light from fountains elder than the Day;A conscience more divine than we,A gladness fed with secret tears,A vexing, forward-reaching senseOf some more noble permanence;A light across the sea,Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.
VWhither leads the pathTo ampler fates that leads?Not down through flowery meads,To reap an aftermathOf youth's vainglorious weeds,But up the steep, amid the wrathAnd shock of deadly-hostile creeds,Where the world's best hope and stayBy battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,Ere yet the sharp, decisive wordLight the black lips of cannon, and the swordDreams in its easeful sheath;But some day the live coal behind the thought,Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,Or from the shrine sereneOf God's pure altar brought,Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and penLearns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:Some day the soft Ideal that we wooedConfronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"Life may be given in many ways,And loyalty to Truth be sealedAs bravely in the closet as the field,So bountiful is Fate;But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and not to yield,This shows, methinks, God's planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old heroic breeds,Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,Fed from within with all the strength he needs.
VISuch was he, our Martyr-Chief,Whom late the Nation he had led,With ashes on her head,Wept with the passion of an angry grief:Forgive me, if from present things I turnTo speak what in my heart will beat and burn,And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote:For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,And, choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and trueHow beautiful to seeOnce more a shepherd of mankind indeed,Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,Not lured by any cheat of birth,But by his clear-grained human worth,And brave old wisdom of sincerity!They knew that outward grace is dust;They could not choose but trustIn that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,And supple-tempered willThat bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.His was no lonely mountain-peak of mindThrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars,Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and PeerCould Nature's equal scheme defaceAnd thwart her genial will;Here was a type of the true elder race,And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.I praise him not; it were too late;And some innative weakness there must beIn him who condescends to victorySuch as the Present gives, and cannot wait,Safe in himself as in a fate.So always firmly he:He knew to bide his time,And can his fame abide,Still patient in his simple faith sublime,Till the wise years decide.Great captains, with their guns and drums,Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,New birth of our new soil, the first American.
VIILong as man's hope insatiate can discernOr only guess some more inspiring goalOutside of Self, enduring as the pole,Along whose course the flying axles burnOf spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;Long as below we cannot findThe meed that stills the inexorable mind;So long this faith to some ideal Good,Under whatever mortal names it masks,Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal moodThat thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,Feeling its challenged pulses leap,While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,Shall win man's praise and woman's love,Shall be a wisdom that we set aboveAll other skills and gifts to culture dear,A virtue round whose forehead we inwreatheLaurels that with a living passion breatheWhen other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,And seal these hours the noblest of our year,Save that our brothers found this better way?
VIIIWe sit here in the Promised LandThat flows with Freedom's honey and milk;But 'twas they won it, sword in hand,Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.We welcome back our bravest and our best;—Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,Who went forth brave and bright as any here!I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,But the sad strings complain,And will not please the ear:I sweep them for a pæan, but they waneAgain and yet againInto a dirge, and die away, in pain.In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:Fitlier may others greet the living,For me the past is unforgiving;I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not by the way;Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;No ban of endless night exiles the brave;And to the saner mindWe rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack;I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track;In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration;They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!
IXBut is there hope to saveEven this ethereal essence from the grave?What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrongSave a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?Before my musing eyeThe mighty ones of old sweep by,Disvoicèd now and insubstantial things,As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,And many races, nameless long ago,To darkness driven by that imperious gustOf ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:O visionary world, condition strange,Where naught abiding is but only Change,Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!Shall we to more continuance make pretence?Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;And, bit by bit,The cunning years steal all from us but woe;Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.But, when we vanish hence,Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,Save to make green their little length of sods,Or deepen pansies for a year or two,Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?Was dying all they had the skill to do?That were not fruitless: but the Soul resentsSuch short-lived service, as if blind eventsRuled without her, or earth could so endure;She claims a more divine investitureOf longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,Gives eyes to mountains blind,Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,And her clear trump sings succor everywhereBy lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;For soul inherits all that soul could dare:Yea, Manhood hath a wider spanAnd larger privilege of life than man.The single deed, the private sacrifice,So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,Is covered up erelong from mortal eyesWith thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;But that high privilege that makes all men peers,That leap of heart whereby a people riseUp to a noble anger's height,And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,That swift validity in noble veins,Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,Of being set on flameBy the pure fire that flies all contact base,But wraps its chosen with angelic might,These are imperishable gains,Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,These hold great futures in their lusty reinsAnd certify to earth a new imperial race.
XWho now shall sneer?Who dare again to say we traceOur lines to a plebeian race?Roundhead and Cavalier!Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,They flit across the ear:That is best blood that hath most iron in 't.To edge resolve with, pouring without stintFor what makes manhood dear.Tell us not of Plantagenets,Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawlDown from some victor in a border-brawl!How poor their outworn coronets,Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreathOur brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,Through whose desert a rescued Nation setsHer heel on treason, and the trumpet hearsShout victory, tingling Europe's sullen earsWith vain resentments and more vain regrets!
XINot in anger, not in pride,Pure from passion's mixture rudeEver to base earth allied,But with far-heard gratitude,Still with heart and voice renewed,To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,The strain should close that consecrates our brave.Lift the heart and lift the head!Lofty be its mood and grave,Not without a martial ring,Not without a prouder treadAnd a peal of exultation:Little right has he to singThrough whose heart in such an hourBeats no march of conscious power,Sweeps no tumult of elation!'Tis no Man we celebrate,By his country's victories great,A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,But the pith and marrow of a NationDrawing force from all her men,Highest, humblest, weakest, all,For her time of need, and thenPulsing it again through them,Till the basest can no longer cower.Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower!How could poet ever tower,If his passions, hopes, and fears,If his triumphs and his tears,Kept not measure with his people?Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!And from every mountain-peak,Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,And so leap on in light from sea to sea,Till the glad news be sentAcross a kindling continent,Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,She of the open soul and open door,With room about her hearth for all mankind!The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,And bids her navies, that so lately hurledTheir crashing battle, hold their thunders in,Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.No challenge sends she to the elder world.That looked askance and hated; a light scornPlays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty kneesShe calls her children back, and waits the mornOf nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."
XIIBow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!No poorest in thy borders but may nowLift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee,But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
James Russell Lowell.
THE EAGLE'S SONG