III

I.

see

lone

To bridle others' clamors and his own, Firmly erect, he towered above them all, The incarnate discipline that was to free With iron curb that armed democracy.

2.

A motley rout was that which came to stare,

In raiment tanned by years of sun and
storm,

Of every shape that was not uniform,
Dotted with regimentals here and there;
An army all of captains, used to pray
And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair,
Skilled to debate their orders, not obey;
Deacons were there, selectmen, men of
note

In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods,

Ready to settle Freewill by a vote,
But largely liberal to its private moods;
Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen,
Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen,
Nor much fastidious as to how and when:
Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create
A thought-staid army or a lasting state:
Haughty they said he was, at first; severe;
But owned, as all men own, the steady
hand

Upon the bridle, patient to command, Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear,

And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere.

Such power there is in clear-eyed selfrestraint

And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint.

How many subtlest influences unite,
With spiritual touch of joy or pain,
Invisible as air and soft as light,
To body forth that image of the brain
We call our Country, visionary shape,
Loved more than woman, fuller of fire
than wine,

Whose charm can none define,

Nor any, though he flee it, can escape!
All party-colored threads the weaver Time
Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime,
All memories, all forebodings, hopes and
fears,

Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea,
A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree,
The casual gleanings of unreckoned years,
Take goddess-shape at last and there is
She,

Old at our birth, new as the springing

A strength behind us making us feel bold In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; Whose force by figures may be summed and told,

So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, And we but drops that bear compulsory part

In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart; But Country is a shape of each man's mind

Sacred from definition, unconfined
By the cramped walls where daily drudger-
ies grind;

An inward vision, yet an outward birth
Of sweet familiar heaven and earth;
A brooding Presence that stirs motions
blind

Of wings within our embryo being's shell
That wait but her completer spell
To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare
Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air.

3.

You, who hold dear this self-conceived ideal,

Whose faith and works alone can make it real,

Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her

shrine

Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine

And feeds the lamp of manhood more di

vine

With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy.
When all have done their utmost, surely he
Hath given the best who gives a character
Erect and constant, which nor any shock
Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea
Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir
From its deep bases in the living rock
Of ancient manhood's sweet security:
And this he gave, serenely far from pride
As baseness, boon with prosperous stars
allied,

Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide.

4.

No bond of men as common pride so strong,

In names time-filtered for the lips of song, Still operant, with the primal Forces bound Whose currents, on their spiritual round, Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid:

Soldier and statesman, rarest unison;
High-poised example of great duties done
Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn
As life's indifferent gifts to all men born;
Dumb for himself, unless it were to God,
But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent,
Tramping the snow to coral where they
trod,

Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed

Save by the men his nobler temper shamed;

Never seduced through show of present good

By other than unsetting lights to steer New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood

More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear;

Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of

will;

Not honored then or now because he wooed The popular voice, but that he still withstood;

Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but

one

Who was all this and ours, and all men's, - WASHINGTON.

Minds strong by fits, irregularly great, That flash and darken like revolving lights, Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait

On the long curve of patient days and nights

Rounding a whole life to the circle fair
Of orbed fulfilment; and this balanced
soul,

So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare
Of draperies theatric, standing there
In perfect symmetry of self-control,
Seems not so great at first, but greater
grows

Still as we look, and by experience learn
How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern
The discipline that wrought through life-
long throes

That energetic passion of repose.

Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen,

The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty

Of plain devotedness to duty,

Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise,

But finding amplest recompense
For life's ungarlanded expense

In work done squarely and unwasted days.
For this we honor him, that he could know
How sweet the service and how free
Of her, God's eldest daughter here below,
And choose in meanest raiment which was
she.

2.

Placid completeness, life without a fall From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall,

Surely if any fame can bear the touch, His will say "Here!" at the last trumpet's call,

The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much.

VII

I.

Never to see a nation born
Hath been given to mortal man,
Unless to those who, on that summer morn,
Gazed silent when the great Virginian
Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash
Shot union through the incoherent clash
Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them
Around a single will's unpliant stem,
And making purpose of emotion rash.
Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its
womb,

Nebulous at first but hardening to a star,

haze:

It was a world of statelier movement then Than this we fret in, he a denizen

Of that ideal Rome that made a man for

men.

VI

I.

The longer on this earth we live
And weigh the various qualities of men,
Seeing how most are fugitive,

Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then,

gloom,

The common faith that made us what we

are.

2.

That lifted blade transformed our jangling clans,

Till then provincial, to Americans,
And made a unity of wildering plans;
Here was the doom fixed: here is marked

the date

When this New World awoke to man's estate,

mind,

Weighing between too early and too late
Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate:
His was the impartial vision of the great
Who see not as they wish, but as they find.
He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less
The incomputable perils of success;
The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind;
The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets
blind;

The waste of war, the ignominy of peace;
On either hand a sullen rear of woes,
Whose garnered lightnings none could
guess,

Piling its thunder - heads and muttering "Cease!"

Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose

The seeming-desperate task whence our
new nation rose.
3.

A noble choice and of immortal seed!
Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance
Or easy were as in a boy's romance;
The man's whole life preludes the single
deed

That shall decide if his inheritance
Be with the sifted few of matchless breed,
Our race's sap and sustenance,

Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed.

Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus or so, What matters it? The Fates with mocking face

Look on inexorable, nor seem to know Where the lot lurks that gives life's fore

most place.

Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still,

And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace,

The problem still for us and all of human

Strong to the end, above complaint or boast: The popular tempest on his rock-mailed

coast

Wasted its wind-borne spray,
The noisy marvel of a day;

His soul sate still in its unstormed abode.

VIII

Virginia gave us this imperial man
Cast in the massive mould

Of those high-statured ages old
Which into grander forms our mortal metal

ran;

She gave us this unblemished gentleman: What shall we give her back but love and praise

As in the dear old unestrangëd days
Before the inevitable wrong began?
Mother of States and undiminished men,
Thou gavest us a country, giving him,
And we owe alway what we owed thee then:
The boon thou wouldst have snatched from
us agen

Shines as before with no abatement dim.
A great man's memory is the only thing
With influence to outlast the present whim
And bind us as when here he knit our

golden ring.

All of him that was subject to the hours
Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours:
Across more recent graves,
Where unresentful Nature waves
Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,
Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God,
We from this consecrated plain stretch out
Our hands as free from afterthought or
doubt

As here the united North

Poured her embrowned manhood forth
In welcome of our savior and thy son.
Through battle we have better learned thy
worth,

The long-breathed valor and undaunted will,

Which, like his own, the day's disaster done,

Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still. Both thine and ours the victory hardly