ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The centuries pass, yea as a dream they pass. Nations and races, with all that they have sown, Sink as the prairie-grass, By the invisible scythe silently mown. The wind breathes over them, and the place thereof Knows them no more. But the unsounded sky still broods above, Blue ocean without shore, Eternal in its breadth and depth and fire of love. So the o’erbrooding Soul, purely ablaze, Full-flooded with the light of God, Outlasts Man’s body and all his works and ways, Outlasts this little earth whereon he trod.

We come not, then, to praise That which transcends our praises, but to crave The light of one great soul, kind as the sky, Upon these later days,— Not like the simpler time gone by, But set with snares of sense and ease, And crowded with poor phantom flatteries That serve us, and enslave. We come, forgetting for a while Our million-peopled cities, pile on pile Upsoaring starry-windowed in the night To perilous Babel-height; We come, forgetting all our new-found powers, The magic of the mastery that is ours, The shoes of swiftness we may lightly wear, And that fresh-captived Ariel of the air, All, all that makes Man’s face to shine With pride of conquest, flushing him as wine,— We come, forgetting all, a little while To look in Lincoln’s eyes, So loving-sad, so kindly-wise; To stand, as judged, before his patient smile; Until his large mould shames us, and we know We are as children, yet have hope to grow, Since this may be the stature of a man.

Strangely his life began, Rough-cradled in the savage wood. Haply our foolish softness grieves O’er much that he found good, The hut of logs, the bed of leaves. By the faint candle, or the winter’s fire, He groped to his desire, The long, lean, sallow, knowledge-hungry lad, Deerskin or homespun clad. Slow-stumbling upward, in good time he grew To that just man his little city knew, His plain, persuasive speech Shaped by an instinct none could ever teach, Savouring of honest earth, and sharp with wilding jest. Then came his country’s call. Humble and hesitant, in doubt and dread, And stooping that tall head Black-ruffled like the eagle’s crest, He passed up to the highest place of all.

Ah, who shall tell the tale of those wild years, Of pride and grief, of blood and tears? The horror and the splendour and the sorrow, The marching-songs of midnight, the sick fears Of every fateful morrow? Sometimes a waft of song, a random strain, Suddenly lifts a curtain in the brain: Some sweet old homesick soldier-ballad, one Beloved of many a sunburnt longing son Of Michigan or Maine, Or that light laughing tune wherewith the South Fifed her boy-soldiers blithe to the cannon’s mouth,— Suddenly all is real once more, The hoping, the despairing, The pity and the passion and the daring, And all the agony of the Brother-War!

Each bore his burden: but he all burdens bore, Whose sad heart folded all the sufferers in; While with a master’s steady hand he played, Mournful but undismayed, That giant game where it was pain to win. Ah, pain to win, but double death to lose! He saw the end, he knew the thing at stake Was Manhood’s captain-jewel: he could not choose But play the grim game out, though that great heart should break. He smiled, as he had need To keep him sane: Sad Lincoln laughed! on mountain-side or plain Not any soldier did a braver deed.

Last, all his duty done,— All the dark bondmen freed, The long-sought leader found, the piteous victory won,— Arrived for him one hour of April sun Wherein he breathed free as the forest again, In glad goodwill to men Nursing some vast forgiveness in his mind. Then—all turned blank and blind. Dare we remember the tragic lilac-time Crimsoned with that mad crime? Nay, hush! Ye have heard how sacrifice must close The supreme service; ’tis the way God chose.

Ah, haply we, the native-born, And sprung of grandsires native too, Proud of soul this stately morn Would with his fame one race, one land indue; Would claim him ours, and ours alone, Flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, Inseparably our own! Ours by the English name, And that old England whence his forebears came, And that dear English of his tongue and pen; Mightier successor of our most mighty men; Ours, by his birth beneath our western sky, Ours, by the flag he died to save, Ours, by the home-fields of his labour, and by The home-earth of his grave!

But hark! as if some league-long barrier broke To let wide waters in tumultuously, I hear the voices of the outland folk From sea to sea—yea, rolling over-sea: “You shall not limit his large glory thus, You shall not mete his greatness with a span! This man belongs to us, Gentile and Jew, Teuton and Celt and Russ And whatso else we be! This man belongs to Man! And never, till a flood of love efface The hard distrusts that sever race from race, Comes his true jubilee! Never, till all the wars, Yea, even the noble wars that strive to peace, With all the thunder of all the drums shall cease, And all the booming guns on all the brother-shores; Never, till that worst strife of every day, More bitter-sordid than the clash of steel, By some new solving word our lips may learn to say, Be wholly done away, Deep-drowned in brotherhood, quenched in the common weal, Ah, never, till every spirit shall stand up free, Comes the great Liberator’s jubilee!”