Classic Poem

IX.

But this glad generous glory did not fall
On ivied abbey or palatial stair,
On statued gallery or superb parterre,
On turreted castle or manorial hall;
It fell on simple cottages, rude and spare;
It fell on laboring lives low-bowed with care;
It fell where drave the rigorous plough and where
The unrusted hay-fork glittered by the granary-wall.
A few brave spirits that long have passed away,
A few brave spirits, on that far April day,
Fought, lost, and losing still most royally won.
For from that hour, which was a world's dismay,
From that long-vanished hour's brief desperate fray,
Freedom's pure beautiful lips could smile and say:
" O men of all lands, look! I have had my Lexington! "
Preluded thus, how memorably rose
That bitter struggle of wrongers against wronged,
And with what peerless prominence largely glows
Out from the obscurer mass of these and those,
That soul in which all godlier gifts belonged!
How loftily in this one life were seen
Simplicity, self-denial, truth austere,
While, like the enwreathing vine about the oak,
In delicate breeding and suave ease of mien,
In all fine courteous affability, spoke
The gallantry of an old-world cavalier!
What stoic patience nerved his lightest breath
In that long arduous fight's ordeal severe,
And on the indomitable breadth and height
Of his supernal virtue, towering white,
How sightless calumny dashed itself to death!
Sire of our dear Republic, and yet son,
True gentleman, blameless ruler, matchless man,
Our model and type, our first American, —
Nay, all of lordlier meaning that no words have won
Till baffled eulogy pauses and says simply — Washington!

X.

But others, honored warriors, men of steel,
Stood round him, ready and eager in devotion,
Strong hewers of that majestic commonweal
Wrought with great blows in battle's hot commotion.
Men following him, their stainless leader, gladly;
Men prompt to seize and use all valued chances;
Men cunning and quick in feints, retreats, advances,
And yet, when the hour to fight came, fighting madly!
Eternal gratitude unto these, who wrested
Our future fate from tyranny, lion-hearted!
Eternal gratitude! since for us they breasted
Red war's tempestuous worst in days departed!
With fadeless reverence be their names invested,
And clothed with love as with a sheltering raiment,
And may the exalted work they grandly started
Render their memory its own sacred payment!
Bluff Putnam, fresh from the plough, a brawny yeoman;
Greene, lover of discipline, yet just, impartial;
Proud Schuyler, courtliest friend and bitter foeman;
Lee, faulty and yet fine-toned, with bearing martial;
The valorous Lafayette, the dashing Marion;
Tough Ethan Allen, with his grandiose phrases;
Montgomery, name beloved by glory's clarion;
Stark; Morgan; Wayne — oh, let the bounteous praises
Of these whose patient bravery broke our fetters,
Of these who won the immortal aim they sought for,
Of these, our stanch progenitors and our betters,
Gleam out, above the applausive land they fought for,
From history's brazen shaft in sculptured letters!

XI.

Mighty Republic, intensely
To these men, by rich obligations,
Thy years adolescent thou owest,
Since only through these men thou glowest
To-day this divine star of nations!
And yet how thy future immensely
Foretokens new splendors unbounded!
Its deep, though an ocean not sounded
That infinite mystery urges
With movements of vast variations,
Will yet, on allegiant surges,
In billowy vassalage, bear thee
Great gifts for thy service and pleasure,
That thou, if God prosper and spare thee,
Shalt regally welcome and treasure!

XII.

For lo, thou standest where the dolorous thunder
Of ruining wrong sweeps backward with the night,
Where deadly mists of ignorance, broken asunder,
Divide round wisdom's incontaminate height.
Thou seest, with brows of beautiful defiance
And eyes whose arrowy lightnings cleave or scorch,
The fearless and imperial shape of Science
Appall the darkness with her glorious torch!
Thou seest some outrage her bold foot is spurning
Bring with its fall some hideous ill to light,
As, at some ponderous boulder's overturning,
Some venomous length may coil itself to smite.
Thou seest how all the crimes of perished ages,
Wrought in Christ's memory, her fine soul disdains;
All terrible engines of old priestly rages,
Fierce torturing racks and blood-encrusted chains;
Crusades and leagues and all the old dead defences
Of arrogant creeds now crumbling to decay,
From that wild massacre of the Albigenses
To the dark anguish of Bartholomew's day.
Thou seest and meetest her in proud alliance,
One old with knowledge, one in halcyon youth,
One our Republic, one invincible Science,
Arch-foe and fierce Apollyon to untruth.
And down the shadowy future's gleaming spaces,
Two stately goddesses, may you journey then,
Alike yet differing, as two sister Graces,
Knowledge and Freedom visible among men.
So may your influence turn the louder quarrels,
Or slumberous enmities of class and clime,
To lovelier manners and more lofty morals,
And virtues blossoming with the touch of time!
Till slowly all humanity through the ample
Planet of its abiding feels at length,
Below your bright supremity of example,
Its genius broaden into kinglier strength.
And then, obedient to divine indenture,
Our destiny shall roll on, we dream not how,
Toward some Hesperian bourne where peradventure
The exultant souls of poets wait it now!
And on the unmastered passions, heart-enslaving,
Shall intellect throne herself for royal sway,
And grosser lusts and all low sensual craving
From the white spirit of man shall drop away.
And charity's mother-life, with joy seraphic,
Shall nourish upon its bosom countless loves,
And commerce, freed from tyrannies of base traffic,
Shall send her strong ships forth, like carrier-doves.
And holier laws of health shall bring their sequel
Of shining bodily beauty, grace and might;
And opposite to the man, yet nobly equal,
The woman shall achieve her loftiest right.
And then from perfect marriages whose calm sweetness
No glimmer of sorrow mars, no dream of strife,
Some perfect race being born, whose rich completeness
O'ershadows utterly all precedent life,
For this, perchance, toward some last goal translated,
Which life and immortality meet to share,
In grand apocalypse, at the moment fated,
The mystery of all time shall be laid bare!