III Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many with crossed hands sighed for her; Of her divine completeness: Those love her best who to themselves are true, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. IV Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us Something to live for here that shall outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; With light from fountains elder than the Day; Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, VI Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: Nature, they say, doth dote, For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 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, So always firmly he: He knew to bide his time, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Great captains, with their guns and drums, These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, IX But is there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave? The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, And many races, nameless long ago, To darkness driven by that imperious gust Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range! Shall we to more continuance make pretence? And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe; Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods? Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents; Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years; Up to a noble_anger's height, And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright, That swift validity in noble veins, Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, By the pure fire that flies all contact base These hold great futures in their lusty reins JULIA WARD HOWE (1819-1910) Battle-Hymn of the Republic Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) One's-self I Sing One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. |