too late,

Surely if any fame can bear the Weighing between too early and touch, His will say 'Here!' at the last Those pitfalls of the man refused

The unexpressive man whose life His was the impartial vision of the

Gazed silent when the great Vir- The future, cloud-land, snare of

prophets blind;

ginian Unsheathed the sword whose fatal The waste of war, the ignominy

Shot union through the incoherent On either hand a sullen rear of

woes,

clash Of our loose atoms, crystallizing Whose garnered lightnings none could guess,

310

them Around a single will's unpliant Piling its thunder-heads and mutstem, tering 'Cease!'

And making purpose of emotion Yet drew not back his hand, but rash.

Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb,

Nebulous at first but hardening to

a star,

gravely chose

Through mutual share of sunburst A noble choice and of immortal

That lifted blade transformed our The man's whole life preludes the

Burnt its last ship and ceased to Choice seems a thing indifferent;

look behind:

thus or so,

Nor thoughtless was the choice; What matters it? The Fates with

no love or hate

mocking face

Could from its poise move that Look on inexorable, nor seem to know

deliberate mind,

Where the lot lurks that gives Shines as before with no abatelife's foremost place. 350

meut dim.

thing

Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it A great man's memory is the only still, And but two ways are offered to With influence to outlast the preour will, sent whim Toil with rare triumph, ease with And bind us as when here he knit our golden ring.

safe disgrace,

The problem still for us and all of All of him that was subject to the

human race.

He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed,

380

hours Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours:

Nor ever faltered 'neath the Across more recent graves,

load

Where unresentful Nature waves

Of petty cares, that gall great Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,

hearts the most,

But kept right on the strenuous Proclaiming the sweet Truce of

Strong to the end, above complaint We from this consecrated plain

Virginia gave us this imperial The long-breathed valor and un

man

Cast in the massive mould

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

tal metal ran;

She gave
us this unblemished
gentleman:

daunted 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 won;

What shall we give her back but If ever with distempered voice or

As in the dear old unestrangèd We have misdeemed thee, here we take it back,

370

days Before the inevitable wrong be- And for the dead of both don comgan? mon black. Mother of States and undiminished Be to us evermore as thou wast men, then, Thou gavest us a country, giving As we forget thou hast not always him,

And we owe alway what we owed Mother of States and unpolluted

thee then:

The boon thou wouldst have

snatched from us agen

men,

Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen!

AN ODE

Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hunger-bold,

FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 Threatening her charge: resolve

ENTRANCED I saw a vision in the One arm uplifted braced a flicker

cloud

That loitered dreaming in yon sun

ing spear,

And one her adamantine shield made light;

Full of fair shapes, half creatures Her face, helm-shadowed, grew a

set sky,

crowd:

dauntless look.

30

In golden mist, an ever-shifting Her trident - sceptred mother's

There, 'mid unreal forms that came

and went

'I know thee now, O goddessborn!' I cried,

In air-spun robes, of evanescent And turned with loftier brow and dye, firmer stride;

A woman's semblance shone pre- For in that spectral cloud-work I had seen

eminent;

Not armed like Pallas, not like Her image, bodied forth by love

Hera proud,

and pride,

But, as on household diligence in- The fearless, the benign, the mo

Glad children clustered confident | Like hers whose hand, a fortress

in play:

of the poor,

Placid her pose, the calm of No blood in vengeance spilt,

energy;

And over her broad brow in many
a round

(That loosened would have gilt
her garment's hem),
Succinct, as toil prescribes, the
hair was wound

though lawful, stains?

40

Who never turned a suppliant from her door?

Whose conquests are the gains of all mankind?

To-day her thanks shall fly on every wind,

In lustrous coils, a natural dia- Unstinted, unrebuked, from shore dem.

to shore,

The cloud changed shape, obse- One love, one hope, and not a quious to the whim doubt behind!

20

Of some transmuting influence felt Cannon to cannon shall repeat her

praise,

And, looking now, a wolf I seemed Banner to banner flap it forth in

in me,

to see

flame;

Of their uncontainable light- That finds repose in forms of

With softened eye the westward | That crowns their patient breath

traveller sees

A thousand miles of neighbors side by side,

Holding by toil-won titles fresh from God

The lands no serf or seigneur ever trod,

With manhood latent in the very sod,

Where the long billow of the

wheatfield's tide

Whose feet, song - sandalled, are

too fleet for Death,

Yet may she claim one privilege urbane

And haply first upon the civic roll,

That none can breathe her air nor grow humane. 140

3.

Oh, better far the briefest hour

Flows to the sky across the prairie Of Athens self-consumed, whose plastic power

wide,

A sweeter vision than the castled Hid Beauty safe from Death in words or stone;

Rhine, Kindly with thoughts of Ruth and Of Rome, fair quarry where those Bible-days benign.

2.

eagles crowd

Whose fulgurous vans about the world had blown

O ancient commonwealths, that Triumphant storm and seeds of

Haply because we could not know Of Venice, fading o'er her shipless

Your deeds like statues down the Last iridescence of a sunset cloud; Than this inert prosperity,

aisles of Time

150

Shine peerless in memorial calm This bovine comfort in the sense sublime, alone! And Athens is a trumpet still, and Yet art came slowly even to such Rome; as those, Yet which of your achievements is Whom no past genius cheated of not foam their own

Weighed with this one of hers (be- With prudence of o'ermastering

low you far

precedent;

In fame, and born beneath a Petal by petal spreads the perfect