LIFE may be given in many ways, | |
| And loyalty to Truth be sealed | |
| As bravely in the closet as the field, | |
| So bountiful is Fate; | |
| But then to stand beside her, | 5 |
| When craven churls deride her, | |
| To front a line in arms and not to yield, | |
| This shows, methinks, God’s plan | |
| And measure of a stalwart man, | |
| Limbed like the old heroic breeds, | 10 |
| Who stand self-poised on manhood’s solid earth, | |
| Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, | |
| Fed from within with all the strength he needs. | |
| |
| Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, | |
| Whom late the Nation he had led, | 15 |
| With ashes on her head, | |
| Wept with the passion of an angry grief: | |
| Forgive me, if from present things I turn | |
| To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, | |
| And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. | 20 |
| Nature, they say, doth dote, | |
| And cannot make a man | |
| Save on some worn-out plan, | |
| Repeating us by rote: | |
| For him her Old-World moulds aside he threw, | 25 |
| And choosing sweet clay from the breast | |
| Of the unexhausted West, | |
| With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, | |
| Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. | |
| How beautiful to see | 30 |
| Once 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, | 35 |
| And brave old wisdom of sincerity! | |
| They knew that outward grace is dust; | |
| They could not choose but trust | |
| In that sure-footed mind’s unfaltering skill, | |
| And supple tempered will | 40 |
| That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. | |
| His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, | |
| Thrusting to thin air o’er our cloudy bars, | |
| A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; | |
| Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, | 45 |
| 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 Peer | 50 |
| Could Nature’s equal scheme deface; | |
| 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 be | 55 |
| In him who condescends to victory | |
| Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, | |
| Safe in himself as in a fate. | |
| So always firmly he: | |
| He knew to bide his time, | 60 |
| 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, | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| New birth of our new soil, the first American. | |
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