Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere; For, killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.
Crime came not near him, she is not the child
Of solitude; Health shrank not from him, for Her home is in the rarely trodden wild,
Where if men seek her not, and death be more
The lust which stings, the splendor which encumbers,
With the free foresters divide no spoil: Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes Of this unsighing people of the woods.
1875, ON THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON'S TAKING COMMAND OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled FROM "UNDER THE ELM," READ AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 3, By habit to what their own hearts abhor, In cities caged. The present case in point I Cite is, that Boone lived hunting up to ninety;
And, what's still stranger, left behind a name For which men vainly decimate the throng, Not only famous, but of that good fame,
Without which glory 's but a tavern song, Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame, Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with
An active hermit, even in age the child Of nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.
'Tis true he shrank from men, even of his nation; When they built up unto his darling trees, He moved some hundred miles off, for a station Where there were fewer houses and more ease; The inconvenience of civilization
Is that you neither can be pleased nor please; But where he met the individual man, He showed himself as kind as mortal can.
He was not all alone; around him grew
A sylvan tribe of children of the chase, Whose young, unwakened world was ever new ; Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view A frown on nature's or on human face: The freeborn forest found and kept them free, And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot, were they, Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions, Because their thoughts had never been the prey Of care or gain the green woods were their portions;
No sinking spirits told them they grew gray; No fashion made them apes of her distortions; Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles, Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.
Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers, And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil; Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers; Corruption could not make their hearts her soil.
BENEATH our consecrated elm
A century ago he stood,
Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood, Which redly foamèd round him but could not overwhelm
The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm.
From colleges, where now the gown To arms had yielded, from the town, Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, Long trained in murder-brooding forests 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.
Haughty they said he was, at first, severe, But owned, as all men owned, 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
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint, And purpose clean as light from every selfish
Musing beneath the legendary tree, The years between furl off: I seem to see The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through, Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue, And weave prophetic aureoles round the head That shines our beacon now, nor darkens with the dead.
A stranger among strangers then, How art thou since renowned the Great, the
Familiar as the day in all the homes of men ! The winged years, that winnow praise and blame, Blow many names out they but fan to flame The self-renewing splendors of thy fame.
0, for a drop of that terse Roman's ink Who gave Agricola dateless length of days,
To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve
Rounding a whole life to the circle fair
To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink, Of orbed completeness; and this balanced soul,
With him so statuelike in sad reserve,
So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve! Nor need i shun due influence of his fame Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow, That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. What figure more immovably august
Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, Calin in good fortune, when it wavered, sure, That soul serene, impenetrably just, Modelled on classic lines, so simple they endure? That soul so softly radiant and so white The track it left seems less of fire than light, Cold but to such as love distemperature? And if pure light, as some deem, be the force That drives rejoicing planets on their course, Why for his power benign seek an impurer source?
His was the true enthusiasm that burns long, Domestically bright,
Fed from itself and shy of human sight, The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong, And not the short-lived fuel of a song. Passionless, say you? What is passion for But to sublime our natures and control To front heroic toils with late return, Or none, or such as shames the conqueror? That fire was fed with substance of the soul, And not with holiday stubble, that could burn Through seven slow years of unadvancing war, Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, With breath of popular applause or blame, Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same, Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame.
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; 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,
So simple in its grandeur, coldly hare 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
This energetic passion of repose.
A nature too decorous and severe, Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys For ardent girls and boys,
Who find no genius in a mind so clear That its grave depths seem obvious and near, Nor a soul great that made so little noise. They feel no force in that calm, cadenced phrase, The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind, That seems to pace the minuet's courtly maze And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days.
His broad-built brain, to self so little kind That no tumultuary blood could blind, Formed to control men, not amaze, Looms not like those that borrow height of 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.
No medal lifts its fretted face,
Nor speaking marble cheats your eye; Yet, while these pictured lines I trace, A living image passes by:
A roof beneath the mountain pines; The cloisters of a hill-girt plain ; The front of life's embattled lines; A mound beside the heaving main. These are the scenes: a boy appears; Set life's round dial in the sun, Count the swift arc of seventy years,
His frame is dust; his task is done.
Yet pause upon the noontide hour,
Ere the declining sun has laid His bleaching rays on manhood's power, And look upon the mighty shade.
No gloom that stately shape can hide, No change uncrown his brow; behold! Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed, Earth has no double from its mould!
Ere from the fields by valor won
The battle-smoke had rolled away, And bared the blood-red setting sun, His eyes were opened on the day.
His land was but a shelving strip, Black with the strife that made it free; He lived to see its banners dip
Their fringes in the western sea.
The boundless prairies learned his name, His words the mountain echoes knew ; The northern breezes swept his fame From icy lake to warm bayou.
In toil he lived; in peace he died;
When life's full cycle was complete, Put off his robes of power and pride, And laid them at his Master's feet.
His rest is by the storm-swept waves, Whom life's wild tempests roughly tried, Whose heart was like the streaming caves Of ocean, throbbing at his side.
Death's cold white hand is like the snow Laid softly on the furrowed hill; It hides the broken seams below, And leaves the summit brighter still.
In vain the envious tongue upbraids; His name a nation's heart shall keep, Till morning's latest sunlight fades
On the blue tablet of the deep!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
Was but like other men, -you, Levite small, Who shut your saintly ears, and prate of hell. And heretics, because outside church-doors, Your church-doors, congregations poor and small Praise Heaven in their own way; you, autocrat Of all the hamlets, who add field to field And house to house, whose slavish children cower Before your tyrant footstep; you, foul-tongued Fanatic or ambitious egotist,
Who think God stoops from his high majesty To lay his finger on your puny head,
And crown it, that you henceforth may parade Your maggotship throughout the wondering world, -
"I am the Lord's anointed !”
FROM THE "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, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid
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 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 moulds aside he throw, 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, 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
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 stiil, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface;
THIS bronze doth keep the very form and mould
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day,- Brooding above the tempest and the fray With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. A power was his beyond the touch of art
Of armed strength: his pure and mighty heart.
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