BENEATH our consecrated elm | |
| A century ago he stood, | |
| Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood, | |
| Which redly foamèd round him but could not overwhelm | |
| The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm. | 5 |
| From colleges, where now the gown | |
| To arms had yielded, from the town, | |
| Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see | |
| The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. | |
| No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, | 10 |
| Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone | |
| To bridle others’ clamors and his own, | |
| Firmly erect, he towered above them all, | |
| The incarnate discipline that was to free | |
| With iron curb that armed democracy. * * * * * | 15 |
| Haughty they said he was, at first, severe, | |
| But owned, as all men owned, the steady hand | |
| Upon the bridle, patient to command, | |
| Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear, | |
| And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere. | 20 |
| Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint, | |
| And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint. | |
| |
| Musing beneath the legendary tree, | |
| The years between furl off: I seem to see | |
| The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through, | 25 |
| Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue, | |
| And weave prophetic aureoles round the head | |
| That shines our beacon now, nor darkens with the dead. | |
| O man of silent mood, | |
| A stranger among strangers then, | 30 |
| How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, | |
| Familiar as the day in all the homes of men! | |
| The wingèd years, that winnow praise and blame, | |
| Blow many names out: they but fan to flame | |
| The self-renewing splendors of thy fame. * * * * * | 35 |
| O, for a drop of that terse Roman’s ink | |
| Who gave Agricola dateless length of days, | |
| To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve | |
| To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion’s brink, | |
| With him so statuelike in sad reserve, | 40 |
| So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve! | |
| Nor need I shun due influence of his fame | |
| Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now | |
| The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow, | |
| That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. | 45 |
| What figure more immovably august | |
| Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, | |
| Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, sure, | |
| That soul serene, impenetrably just, | |
| Modelled on classic lines, so simple they endure? | 50 |
| That soul so softly radiant and so white | |
| The track it left seems less of fire than light, | |
| Cold but to such as love distemperature? | |
| And if pure light, as some deem, be the force | |
| That drives rejoicing planets on their course, | 55 |
| Why for his power benign seek an impurer source? | |
| His was the true enthusiasm that burns long, | |
| Domestically bright, | |
| Fed from itself and shy of human sight, | |
| The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong, | 60 |
| And not the short-lived fuel of a song. | |
| Passionless, say you? What is passion for | |
| But to sublime our natures and control, | |
| To front heroic toils with late return, | |
| Or none, or such as shames the conqueror? | 65 |
| That fire was fed with substance of the soul, | |
| And not with holiday stubble, that could burn | |
| Through seven slow years of unadvancing war, | |
| Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, | |
| With breath of popular applause or blame, | 70 |
| Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same, | |
| Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame. | |
| |
| Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; | |
| High-poised example of great duties done | |
| Simply as breathing, a world’s honors worn | 75 |
| As life’s indifferent gifts to all men born; | |
| Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, | |
| But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, | |
| Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, | |
| Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; | 80 |
| Modest, yet firm as Nature’s self; unblamed | |
| Save by the men his nobler temper shamed; | |
| Not honored then or now because he wooed | |
| The popular voice, but that he still withstood; | |
| Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one | 85 |
| Who was all this, and ours, and all men’s,—Washington. | |
| |
| Minds strong by fits, irregularly great, | |
| That flash and darken like revolving lights, | |
| Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait | |
| On the long curve of patient days and nights, | 90 |
| Rounding the whole life to the circle fair | |
| Of orbed completeness; and this balanced soul, | |
| So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare | |
| Of draperies theatric, standing there | |
| In perfect symmetry of self-control, | 95 |
| Seems not so great at first, but greater grows | |
| Still as we look, and by experience learn | |
| How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern | |
| The discipline that wrought through life-long throes | |
| This energetic passion of repose. | 100 |
| A nature too decorous and severe | |
| Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys | |
| For ardent girls and boys, | |
| Who find no genius in a mind so clear | |
| That its grave depths seem obvious and near, | 105 |
| Nor a soul great that made so little noise. | |
| They feel no force in that calm, cadenced phrase, | |
| The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind, | |
| That seems to pace the minuet’s courtly maze | |
| And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days. | 110 |
| His broad-built brain, to self so little kind | |
| That no tumultuary blood could blind, | |
| Formed to control men, not amaze, | |
| Looms not like those that borrow height of haze: | |
| It was a world of statelier movement then | 115 |
| Than this we fret in, he a denizen | |
| Of that ideal Rome that made a man for men. * * * * * | |
| Placid completeness, life without a fall | |
| From faith or highest aims, truth’s breachless wall, | |
| Surely if any fame can bear the touch, | 120 |
| His will say “Here!” at the last trumpet’s call, | |
| The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. | |
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