Classic Poem

Is this our gift to Lincoln — this white fane
Austere upon a far unnatural hill? —
This is not meet for him who comes again
To haunt the hearts of men and bid them fill
Their deeds with greatness! His was no Grecian grace,
Save in the cadence of his peerless prose ...
High-cheek'd, raw-boned, deep-eyed, — Time holds that face
And storied fame immortal.

Strangely he rose,
By dint of will and matchless honesty,
And singleness of mind, till in the hour
Of trial they chose him Captain of the Free
To shield the state in unity and power ...
O, poet and prophet-soul and pioneer, —
Born of the plains, unschool'd in classic lore,
Gift of the free young West and the lost frontier, —
This tomb-cold temple in the Attic mould
Mansions not you who in the shock of war
And fame lost nothing intimate or kind,
Assumed no purple, arrogant or cold,
Displayed no hate, denied no righteous prayer!

Sleepless in vigilance, humorous and wise
With the keen brooding wisdom of a mind
No subaltern could capture unaware,
Months long he toiled and pondered to devise
A way to save the Union, slave or free;
And as the tumult grew among the throng,
And violent voices bred hostility,
He spoke of this rather than of the wrong
That set mens' souls aflame.
Yet the war came, —
Reaping his dreams in dust; so for a time,
Guiltless of lust for tyrant power or fame,
He yielded pen and forum to the crime
Of fratricidal war, — thus to defend
A living frame of government proved good.
And by what simple deed the war could end
Often did he declare ... Yet force withstood
And parried force and armies multiplied
With years, sealing a nation's tragedy, —
Till Freedom perished while men fought and died
And wrecked a continent to make men free!
( Sic semper the red tyranny of Mars!)
Until at last they ceased, and turned to find
The nation prostrate, gashed with angry scars,
Bewildered at its tasks, and all but blind
With tears; — ceased, and put up the tatter'd flags —
Stained emblems of their glory and their shame,
And youth, grown old in war, came home in rags
Hungry for love and freedom, sick of fame!
But e'er the sunset bugles died away,
While distant drums still roll'd the proud retreat, —
By night through Washington a wild dismay
Breathless with terror sped from street to street;
Sudden and stark, craven and terrible
From April's heaven burst the maniac flame,
And Murder brandished in the capital
Her bloody blade and vanished as she came! . .
Hushed are the tongues that had been critical,
Bowed are the heads that had been cold or blind:
" The President is dead! " The churchbells chime ...
So died a gallant heart, a royal mind, —
The truest, bravest, sweetest of his time;
So fell a giant at a dastard 's hands,
So perish'd greatness, — and that mighty fall
Rang through the murmuring forest's deepest glades,
Thrill'd on the wires, startled listening lands, —
Ceased only in the ages' echoing shades!

*****

The times are changed ... Three-score brief years have fled;
Another age is here with other men
And issues, temporal, for which new blood is shed.
The cause you died for, Lincoln, is no more;
Another holds your seat, writes with your pen,
Employs your very words to mask a war
He little understands and less controls.
Without your spirit's grasp or charity,
He summons men to slaughter and extols
Abstractions, fills our world with cruelty,
Suspicion's poison, hot intolerance,
The mob's blood frenzy, the brute slings of hate!
From principle to compromise he strays,
Outrages Russia, binds us fast to France,
Surrenders all to England's shrewd mandate,
And soothes us, snares us, cows us with a phrase!

But Time will not be cow'd, and men will grow
Weary of lies and hating and pretense,
And in gray after-dawns will come to know
That all men thought they fought in self-defense,
Driven or drugg'd, as we, by force and lies
Into Death's canyons for Life's fair ideals! —
That victory corrupts the heart and steals
Bright Virtue's baldric from the best allies,
That lean and lonely, trouble-tangled years
Will shame the peace they bought with blood and tears
And mock their credulous costliest sacrifice! . .
That pity is the final meed of praise
For him who more than all himself betrays!

So be it, — even as it has been before,
So will it be till men at length are free
And youth resists the tinsell'd shame of war
For greater truth and life and loyalty ...
Till that white dawn we die in sulphurous strife
Sown like old dragons' teeth by sordid men
Who care far less for youth or truth or life
Than for brief power and blood-bespatter'd gold
For which they sell their souls ...
Nay, once again,
This temple of some dead forgotten God, —
White Attic shape from regions clear and cold,
This mausoleum mirrored in the flood
Of our own brown Potomac — is not meet
For a new nation's hero or his praise!
Oh, build him rather a transcending street
Where men may pass and seek their several ways
From east to west, from north to south, with ease;
Rear him a spire nobler than before! —
But Oh! fail not, for him who hated war,
Within that Covenant he saved to raise
A surer shield for freedom and for peace!

Lincoln! heroic commoner, young and old
Lay flowers and thanksgivings at your feet,
And tell once more a story never told —
Less of your cause than you, warm heart that beat,
Clear-seeing mind, inspired simplicity!
And when the solvent years have sealed in dust
Our tortured time, its tears, its cruelty,
Its murdering cant, — free souls and brave and just
Will light their candles at your purer flame, —
Remorseful of our paltry perjured shame
And boundless malice, — even as now men strew
On equal graves red roses for the Blue,
And for the Gray white roses wreath'd with rue!