Full and rich with freedom rife, V Saw you when the war was done (Such is Lincoln's story) Him whose strength the strife had won Sinking like the setting sun Crowned with human glory? Hero! Hero! Sent from God! Leader of his people. VI Saw you in our country's roll VII Hero! Yes! We know thy fame; It will live for ever! Thou to us art still the same; FROM THE "COMMEMORATION ODE" James Russell Lowell LIFE may be given in many ways, As bravely in the closet as the field, But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands 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 passion of an angry grief; Forgive me if from present things I turn And can not 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 God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind, indeed, But by his clean-grained human worth, 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, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of serf or peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; 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 can not 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 faith sublime, Great captains with their guns and drums, These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, LINCOLN James Whitcomb Riley A PEACEFUL life;-just toil and rest— All his desire;— To read the books he liked the best Beside the cabin fire God's word and man's;-to peer sometimes The onmarch of his dreams. A peaceful life;-to hear the low Or woodman's axe that, blow on blow, And yet there stirred within his breast Of drums, made high above his rest A peaceful life! They haled him even As One was haled Whose open palms were nailed toward Heaven When prayers nor aught availed. And, lo, he paid the selfsame price LINCOLN Julia Ward Howe THROUGH the dim pageant of the years A cabin of the Western wild Nor nurse, nor parent dear can know Beyond is toil for daily bread A man of homely, rustic ways, And soon earth's highest meed has won, No throne of honors and delights; |