3
Take heart, thou lone one—a champion leaps to defend thee,
Armed with the loftier issue, the art and the moral;
Eloquent lips, and the integral heart of Conviction,
Powerful still, when the arm of the spoiler has crumbled.
Doctrine of Right, and the Old World tradition of Freedom—
Doctrine of Justice, thank God, no New England invention;
Known to the Ancients, known to the Gods and their poets,
Known to great Tully, whose pillars of perfect marble
Stand in the temple of Truth, his remembrance for Ages.
There shall thy record be, Knight of the wronged and the helpless;
There shall thy weapon be kept, with the motto: “I hurled it.”
How hast thou hardened the loving heart and quick feelings,
To stand up and speak the great spirit-dividing sentence,
To stand, a mark for the thief and assassin to aim at.
More than our envy, more than thy hope was thy guerdon—
Setting the seal of thy blood to the word of thy courage.
If but the pure of heart in a pure cause should suffer,
S UMNER , the task thou hast chosen was thine for its fitness.
Never was Paschal victim more stainlessly offered,
Never on milder brow gleamed the crown of the martyr.
Stand thence, a mark for the better and nobler ambition;
For they are holy, the wounds that the Southerner dealt thee.
Count them blessed, and blessed the mother that bore thee.
Would that the thing I best love, aye, the son of my bosom,
Suffering beside thee, had shared the high deed and its glory.
Shall we bend over those wounds with our tears and our balsams?
Tears warm with rapture, balsams of costliest clearness.
Take thy deserving then—wear it for life on thy forehead;
Crowned with those scars shalt thou enter the just man's heaven;
Crowned with those scars shalt thou stand in the record of heroes.
If earthly counsel were vain, should the heavens befriend thee.
Sinking Orion, cast out in the wrath of the tyrant,
Calls not in vain on the dumb heart of Nature to help him;
Lo! the deep comes to his aid, and its monsters upbear him;
Hesper stoops over the Ocean her long shining tresses
Till he is drawn by them up to the zone of her beauty;
And, like fair sisters, the stars close around him forever.
Armed with the loftier issue, the art and the moral;
Eloquent lips, and the integral heart of Conviction,
Powerful still, when the arm of the spoiler has crumbled.
Doctrine of Right, and the Old World tradition of Freedom—
Doctrine of Justice, thank God, no New England invention;
Known to the Ancients, known to the Gods and their poets,
Known to great Tully, whose pillars of perfect marble
Stand in the temple of Truth, his remembrance for Ages.
There shall thy record be, Knight of the wronged and the helpless;
There shall thy weapon be kept, with the motto: “I hurled it.”
How hast thou hardened the loving heart and quick feelings,
To stand up and speak the great spirit-dividing sentence,
To stand, a mark for the thief and assassin to aim at.
More than our envy, more than thy hope was thy guerdon—
Setting the seal of thy blood to the word of thy courage.
If but the pure of heart in a pure cause should suffer,
S UMNER , the task thou hast chosen was thine for its fitness.
Never was Paschal victim more stainlessly offered,
Never on milder brow gleamed the crown of the martyr.
Stand thence, a mark for the better and nobler ambition;
For they are holy, the wounds that the Southerner dealt thee.
Count them blessed, and blessed the mother that bore thee.
Would that the thing I best love, aye, the son of my bosom,
Suffering beside thee, had shared the high deed and its glory.
Shall we bend over those wounds with our tears and our balsams?
Tears warm with rapture, balsams of costliest clearness.
Take thy deserving then—wear it for life on thy forehead;
Crowned with those scars shalt thou enter the just man's heaven;
Crowned with those scars shalt thou stand in the record of heroes.
If earthly counsel were vain, should the heavens befriend thee.
Sinking Orion, cast out in the wrath of the tyrant,
Calls not in vain on the dumb heart of Nature to help him;
Lo! the deep comes to his aid, and its monsters upbear him;
Hesper stoops over the Ocean her long shining tresses
Till he is drawn by them up to the zone of her beauty;
And, like fair sisters, the stars close around him forever.
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