Classic Poem

Adown Potomac's stream the vessel glides
Swiftly as arrow from the slackened bow,
Bathes in receding streams her swelling sides,
And cleaves the surface with her foam-washed prow.
Far, far behind the city clusters now,
A shapeless mass all but yon noble dome,
Upon whose snowy slope the sunlight's glow
Dwells brightly, Freedom's temple and her home,
The grander capital of a more powerful Rome.

Lo! yon unsightly shaft, whose corner-stone
Was laid in proud memorial of the man,
The only man whose aims were not his own,
In God's great work a worthy artisan.
His was the sword that glittered o'er the van
In that first conflict which prepared the way
For all that since has followed. He could scan
The clouds that gloomed Columbia's future day,
And woe betide the hour his counsel lost its sway!

Like thine, my country, its foundations were
Laid compact and immovable. The toil
Of busy workmen raised with progress sure,
Though slow, like thine, the grandly graceful pile,
And men looked on with an approving smile:
And all was well. There came at length an hour
When warning's voice was heard not, and the guile
Of railing tongues embroiled the nation's power.
The half-built monument was left the tempest's dower.

Its fate and thine on the same cause depend,
And in the past the same results we see.
His counsel, followed, may avert the end
That menaces thy hard-won liberty.
It stands the index of thy destiny.
When high it towers, a pinnacle of snow,
Spotless shall be thy robes, thy people free;
When dwarfed and foul the shaft, so thou shalt grow.
Its rise foretells thy power; its fall thy overthrow.

Within thy compass city old yet young,
Old in thy history yet young in years,
Full many a scene worthy of poet's song,
And suited well to rapture or to tears,
Have I beheld. Before my sight appears
The hurried bustling of an anxious crowd
Down black-draped avenues, each visage wears
A shade of horror, curses deep and loud
Are uttered on the hand before which Lincoln bowed.

Another, and an earlier, scene I view.
Horsemen dash furiously to and fro,
With clattering swords and uniforms of blue,
While sturdily tramping o'er the pavement go
Small bands of infantry, whose columns show
Hues more diverse, though still the blue prevails:
For round about the town encamp the foe,
And doubtfully have swayed the battle's scales.
Around from mouth to mouth fly Rumor's fearful tales.

Again, flags on the roofs are waving high,
And hands from balconies. A solid mass
Of soldiery press on exultingly
Below. As through the myriads they pass
Cheer follows cheer. The line no ending has
In East or West discernible. The blare
Of trumpets and the drum's tremendous bass,
And fife's shrill jubilant music fill the air,
And in soul-stirring concord mingle grandly there.

Thus flew his thought on various errand bent,
Back o'er the trail that leads to days gone by,
Nor noted how the sinking city blent
With the faint hillocks and the fainter sky.
At last it vanished from his straining eye.
Half joyful then, half sad, he turned away;
For the true charms of firm reality
Leaving the mystic frost-work vague and gray,
Which Memory weaves to melt in the warm flush of day.

Right blithe indeed was all the scene around;
On either shore waved Autumn's bannerets,
And the high bluffs the northern view that bound
Were glorious as the sun is when he sets.
Gulls circle; swallows skim; a light breeze frets
The water's sparkling surface; here and there
Sails in the sun show whitely; constant jets
Of spray the active wheels fling in the air —
And Eric's heart in Nature's guileless joy could share

A pillared mansion built in massive form,
Framed in a glare of reddening autumn leaves,
On the round hill-top meeting sun and storm
Midway toward their sources. Fancy weaves,
Old manse, a halo round thee. Here the sheaves
Of that rich harvest which the world has reaped
Grew into golden fulness. 'Neath yon eaves
That mind from point to point progressive leaped,
Then in one mighty rush to fame's first yanguard sweeped.

Mount Vernon, the world owes a debt to thee
It never can obliterate or repay.
For spots like these, high-towering grand and free,
Free to the eye's far range, the wind's wild play,
Where the thrilled spirit swells beyond its clay,
These are the places meet to fashion souls
That may aspire to more than monarch's sway.
Few such there are: too much the town controls,
Cramps, dwarfs, giving only part. Here Nature all unrolls.

What joyance ruled in yonder spacious halls
When Fairfax's grace presided o'er the board,
O'erlooking from his mansion's new-built walls
Full many a fruitful mile outstretching broad,
And garneries with grain to bursting stored!
A generous life, no doubt, of hearty cheer,
Well suited to the jovial olden lord
Who left his English home to sojourn here,
And still with wine and feast helped round the merry year.

Few traits there are that so attract our gaze
In all that shows Britannia's real worth
Than this same soulful homely fireside blaze
That flickers still about her dim-grown hearth,
That honest heartiness of joy and mirth
Which made of life one careless holiday,
Enjoyed earth's good while living on the earth,
Nor deemed it sin to frolic and be gay.
Our motherland, dear is she still, — thrice dear alway.

Nor is it banished yet from Western shores.
Throughout Virginia's impoverished lands
Still sons of cavaliers keep open doors,
Still welcome tightens in their glowing hands
For all who will be friends: and — glebe or sands —
Whate'er the soil produces theirs shall be.
Are these a people worthy despot's bands?
There still the huntsmen scour across the lea;
There still before the hounds does fearful Reynard flee.

Nor are the colder Northern firesides void
Of all that brightens life and makes it fair.
Fearless and firm and stern in manly pride,
God's noblest handiwork is fashioned there.
The grand old Puritanic mind they share, —
Gloomily grand, like some forbidding tower,
Whose windows scarce admit the outer glare;
Softened by wizard Time's transforming power.
And, given in joy, their hand remains though tempests lower.

Here, too, in later years a soldier came,
Bowed by a venerable load of years,
A foreigner in nothing but the name,
And welcomed to our land with smiles and tears,
To view the cause he served in doubts and fears
At last, triumphant, take its final stand,
Like Joseph's sheaf among the bending ears,
The shrine of homage from each ancient land,
And destined high o'er all to raise its forehead grand.

Loved Lafayette, thy name has sacred grown,
One of fair Freedom's priceless heritages.
It needs no monumental sculptured stone
To fix its place in all succeeding ages.
And ever when the red sirocco rages,
And all that dignifies our human kind
Seems shrivelled in the blast, and bards and sages,
Statesmen and warriors, shrunk to petty mind,
In thy self-sacrificing soul new hope we find.

New faith in the angelic soul of man;
New faith in purposes serene and high;
In that original celestial plan
Of grander power and nobler purity,
Deep as the ocean, lofty as the sky.
A gem half-dimmed within the earthy mine,
Gladdening, with all its flaws, the pitying eye,
That scorns to sneer, and longs to see it shine
In perfect blaze — nor would for worlds that hope resign.

There's something in these mighty fluid masses,
Sleeping 'mid scenes with sylvan beauty rife,
Or roaring madly down the mountain passes,
That bears resemblance to our human life.
Onward the current sweeps unvexed by strife,
Till some huge obstacle bars further way;
Where jagged rocks divide it like a knife,
Flanked by huge bulwarks pitiless and gray;
Then roars its awful voice, far flies the scattering spray.

And such a spot I know, and there have wandered,
Broad bright Potomac, by thy rock-strewn side,
To watch thy wondrous power — not idly squandered —
That effort's vast momentum lends thy tide
Fresh speed through all its course — and have allied
A little of thy energy to mine,
Indrawn as from a font; and, spreading wide
Above, have viewed thy glassy expanse shine,
By verdurous islets gemmed, like emeralds round a shrine.

And now he views an uninviting scene.
Acquia's marshes stretch on either hand,
A broad expanse of water lies between,
Shallow and turbid, where, decaying, stand
Long straggling lines of piles, toward the land
Outstretching; and the circling hills are bare,
Bleak, and low-lying. At their chief's command,
The marshalled waterfowl troop by in air,
And blackbirds swarm in clouds to gain their reedy fare.

*****

Bright Eden-nooks of scarlet fern and weeds
And parti-colored grasses glancing by,
Scarce seen ere vanished. Stunted corn succeeds,
And swampy woodlands race across the eye.
A constant change without variety!
An utter quiet undisturbed by sound,
Save the swift rumble and the jarring cry!
The dizzy distance wheeling round and round, —
Lo! here once more we stand on new-made classic ground.

Two fronting ridges leave a vale between,
Adown whose centre Rappahannock flows,
Skirting the town. A field, no longer green,
Slopes thither from the hills. 'Twas here the foes
Met in that dread December, when uprose
The starry banner, but to fall again
Amid the storm-swept ruin. All the woes
Horror lends strife were there. With mangled men,
Torn staggering from the ranks, each volley strewed the plain.

Marye's curved crest a flaming furnace glowed.
Around it, o'er it, hung a sulphurous cloud.
Flames drove, incessant, through, and the whole air sowed
With raging grapeshot. As the billows crowd,
Storm-driven, against a torrent's mouth, so flowed
The tide of soldiery toward the hill:
Though backward borne by the dread stream that mowed
Thousands to earth, yet surging onward still,
With wild and fierce desire and tumult loud and shrill.

And this is only one of many fields
Where Death has sown his seed and reaped his grain.
A plenteous harvest his plantation yields.
From Appalachia's rugged mountain chain
To where the rivers mingle with the main
Virginia's soil is fertilized by gore:
Each hill, each stream, commemorates the slain.
Man's monuments lie wrecked on field and shore;
But those that mark his follies stand for evermore.

*****

Adown a roadway flanked by stately elms,
Across a garden on the hillock's brow —
And there behold; where once his savage realms
Old Powhatan surveyed, remaineth now
But yonder stone to mark his overthrow.
There lay the captive's fated head, and there
Knelt the chief's daughter by her helpless foe,
Bright with the spirit's beauty, bright, not fair.
The ruthless arm upswung stopped powerless in air.

Bright gleams the river's expanse, bright the sky
Stretches in boundless fields of perfect blue.
How soft yon emerald meadows to the eye!
How mellow yonder cornfield's golden hue!
As yonder mock-bird tunes his song anew,
How all the air with music thrills again!
Yet not a charm that blossoms on the view
Can match that glorious vision of the brain,
Nor earthly music vie with Mercy's heavenly strain.

*****

Success, a worthy god for deathless minds!
The creature of fortuitous circumstance
Or others' unrequited toil, which finds
All finished, saving only to enhance
(Or mar) what they have done, — to the world's glance
Invisible, — or friendly aiding hand,
Random endeavor, craft, or crime, perchance.
A worthy god! — But still this truth shall stand, —
Than a grand failure earth holds nought more truly grand.

And woe to those who pin their faith on praise,
And strive to catch the bubble ere it burst
Or fly to other hands! What though the rays
With matchless splendor captivate at first?
False is that brightness, fickle and accurst.
But well for him whose mountain mind can tower
Above the tumult and despise the thirst, —
Existing far beyond the present hour:
A worthier meed shall be that steadfast spirit's dower.

For he that represents a principle,
And in his strong conviction breasts the shock
Of all opposing powers of earth and hell,
Holding this firm, though empires reel and rock;
And men and demons crowd to fleer and mock;
And friends join foemen in malicious schemes;
When Lethe swallows all the ignoble flock,
Then round his head celestial radiance gleams;
And each succeeding age adds more transcendent beams.