The Poets' Lincoln Part 24

Not for thy sheaves nor savannas Crown we thee, proud Illinois!

Here in his grave is thy grandeur; Born of his sorrow thy joy.

Only the tomb by Mount Zion, Hewn for the Lord, do we hold Dearer than his in thy prairies, Girdled with harvests of gold!

Still for the world through the ages Wreathing with glory his brow, He shall be Liberty's Saviour; Freedom's Jerusalem thou!

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

In Lincoln Park, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. Thomas Ball, sculptor.]

The first contribution of five dollars for the statue in Lincoln Park, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., was made by a colored woman named Charlotte Scott, of Marietta, Ohio, the morning after the a.s.sa.s.sination of President Lincoln, and the entire cost of said monument, amounting to $17,000, was paid by subscriptions of colored people. It was unveiled April 14, 1876.

James Russell Lowell, born in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 22, 1819. He received his degree in 1838, at Harvard, and his first production was a cla.s.s poem which was delivered on that date. He was successor of Professor Longfellow in the chair of Modern Languages at Harvard College. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes to the Spanish Mission, from which he was transferred in 1880 to the Court of St. James. A long list of poetical works have been published to his credit. He died August 12, 1891.

COMMEMORATION ODE

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, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, G.o.d's plan And measures of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 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, With ashes on her head, Wept with the pa.s.sion 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.

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 molds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of G.o.d, and true.

How beautiful to see 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, 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 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, 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 or Peer 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 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, 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, But at last silence comes; These are all gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

By Leonard W. Volk]

Richard Henry Stoddard, born in Hingham, Ma.s.sachusetts, July 2, 1825.

His first book, ent.i.tled _Foot Prints_, was published in 1849, and some three years after a more mature collection of poems was published. In later years a number of his books were published, all of which have been received with approbation by the public. Died May 12, 1903.

AN HORATIAN ODE

(_To Lincoln_)

Not as when some great captain falls In battle, where his country calls, Beyond the struggling lines That push his dread designs

To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: Or in the last charge, at the head Of his determined men, Who must be victors then!

Nor as when sink the civic great, The safer pillars of the State, Whose calm, mature, wise words Suppress the need of swords!

With no such tears as e'er were shed Above the n.o.blest of our dead Do we today deplore The man that is no more.

Our sorrow hath a wider scope, Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,-- A wonder, blind and dumb, That waits--what is to come!

Not more astonished had we been If madness, that dark night, unseen, Had in our chambers crept, And murdered while we slept!

We woke to find a mourning earth-- Our Lares s.h.i.+vered on the hearth,-- To roof-tree fallen--all That could affright, appall!

Such thunderbolts, in other lands, Have smitten the rod from royal hands, But spared, with us, till now, Each laureled Caesar's brow.

No Caesar he, whom we lament, A man without a precedent, Sent it would seem, to do His work--and perish too!

Not by the weary cares of state, The endless tasks, which will not wait, Which, often done in vain, Must yet be done again;

Not in the dark, wild tide of war, Which rose so high, and rolled so far, Sweeping from sea to sea In awful anarchy;--

Four fateful years of mortal strife, Which slowly drained the Nation's life, (Yet, for each drop that ran There sprang an armed man!)

Not then;--but when by measures meet-- By victory, and by defeat, By courage, patience, skill, The people's fixed "We will!"

Had pierced, had crushed rebellion dead-- Without a hand, without a head:-- At last, when all was well, He fell--O, how he fell!

Tyrants have fallen by such as thou, And good hath followed,--may it now!

(G.o.d lets bad instruments Produce the best events.)

But he, the man we mourn today, No tyrant was; so mild a sway In one such weight who bore Was never known before!

_From "Poems of Richard Henry Stoddard"_ Copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GOOD GRAY POET" (Walt Whitman)]

Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, May 31, 1819.

He was educated in the public schools of Brooklyn and New York City.