Classic Poem

(Dedication of the National Monument, July 1, 1869.)
I
After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake
Here, from the shadows of impending death,
Those words of solemn breath,
What voice may fitly break
The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him?
We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim,
And, as a Nation's litany, repeat
The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete,
Noble as then, but now more sadly-sweet:
"Let us, the Living, rather dedicate
Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they
Thus far advanced so nobly on its way,
And save the perilled State!
Let us, upon this field where they, the brave,
Their last full measure of devotion gave,
Highly resolve they have not died in vain!--
That, under God, the Nation's later birth
Of freedom, and the people's gain
Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane
And perish from the circle of the earth!"
From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire
To light her faded fire,
And into wandering music turn
Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern?
His voice all elegies anticipated;
For, whatsoe'er the strain,
We hear that one refrain:
"We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!"
II

After the thunder-storm our heaven is blue:
Far-off, along the borders of the sky,
In silver folds the clouds of battle lie,
With soft, consoling sunlight shining through;
And round the sweeping circle of your hills
The crashing cannon-thrills
Have faded from the memory of the air;
And Summer pours from unexhausted fountains
Her bliss on yonder mountains:
The camps are tenantless, the breastworks bare:
Earth keeps no stain where hero-blood was poured:
The hornets, humming on their wings of lead,
Have ceased to sting, their angry swarms are dead,
And, harmless in its scabbard, rusts the sword!
III
O, not till now,--O, now we dare, at last,
To give our heroes fitting consecration!
Not till the soreness of the strife is past,
And Peace hath comforted the weary Nation!
So long her sad, indignant spirit held
One keen regret, one throb of pain, unquelled;
The ashes of the burning lay upon her,
We stood beside their graves with brows abased,!
Waiting the purer mood to do them honor!
They, through the flames of this dread holocaust,
The patriot's wrath, the soldier's ardor, lost:
They sit above us and above our passion,
Disparaged even by our human tears.--
Beholding truth our race, perchance, may fashion
In the slow process of the creeping years.
We saw the still reproof upon their faces;
We heard them whisper from the shining spaces:
"To-day ye grieve: come not to us with sorrow!
Your grief but clouds the ether where we dwell;
your anger keeps your souls and ours apart:
But come with peace and pardon, all is well!
And come with love, we touch you, heart to heart!"
IV

Immortal Brothers, we have heard!
Our lips declare the reconciling word:
For Battle taught, that set us face to face,
The stubborn temper of the race,
And both, from fields no longer alien, come,
To grander action equally invited,--
Marshalled by Learning's trump, by Labor's drum,
In strife that purifies and makes united!
We force to build, the powers that would destroy;
The muscles, hardened by the sabre's grasp,
Now give our hands a firmer clasp:
We bring not grief to you, but solemn joy!
And, feeling you so near;
Look forward with your eyes, divinely clear,
To some sublimely-perfect, sacred year,
When sons of fathers whom ye overcame
Forget in mutual pride the partial blame,
And join with us, to set the final crown
Upon your dear renown,--
The People's Union in heart and name!
V

And yet, ye Dead!--and yet
Our clouded natures cling to our regret:
We are not all resigned
To yield, with even mind,
Our scarcely-risen stars, that here untimely set.
We needs must think of History that waits
For lines that live but in their proud beginning,--
Arrested promises and cheated fates,--
Youth's boundless venture and its single winning!
We see the ghosts of deeds they might have done,
The phantom homes that beaconed their endeavor;
The seeds of countless lives, in them begun,
That might have multiplied for us forever!
We grudge the better strain of men
That proved itself, and was extinguished then--
The field, with strength and hope so thickly sown,
Wherefrom no other harvest shall be mown:
For all the land, within its clasping seas,
Is poorer now in bravery and beauty,
Such wealth of manly loves and energies
Was given to teach us all the freeman's sacred duty!
VI

Again 't is they, the Dead,
By whom our hearts are comforted.
Deep as the land-blown murmurs of the waves
The answer cometh from a thousand graves:
"Not so! we are not orphaned of our fate!
Though life were warmest, and though love were sweetest,
We still have portion in their best estate:
Our fortune is the fairest and completest!
Our homes are everywhere: our loves are set
In hearts of man and woman, sweet and vernal:
Courage and Truth, the children we beget,
Unmixed to baser earth, shall be eternal.
A finer spirit in the blood shall give
The token of the lines wherein we live,--
Unselfish force, unconscious nobleness
That in the shocks of fortune stands unshaken,--
The hopes that in their very being bless,
The aspirations that to deeds awaken!
If aught of finer virtue ye allow
To us, that faith alone its like shall win you;
So, trust like ours shall ever lift the brow;
And strength like ours shall ever steel the sinew!
We are the blossoms which the storm has cast
From the Spring promise of our Freedom's tree,
Pruning its overgrowths, that so, at last,
Its later fruit more bountiful shall be!--
Content, if, when the balm of Time assuages
The branch's hurt, some fragrance of our lives
In all the land survives,
And makes their memory sweet through still expanding ages!"
VII

Thus grandly, they we mourn, themselves console us;
And, as their spirits conquer and control us,
We hear, from some high realm that lies beyond,
The hero-voices of the Past respond.
From every State that reached a broader right
Through fiery gates of battle; from the shock
OF old invasions on the People's rock;
From tribes that stood, in Kings' and Priests' despite;
From graves, forgotten in the Syrian sand,
Or nameless barrows of the Northern strand,
Or gorges of the Alps and Pyrenees,
Or the dark bowels of devouring seas,--
Wherever Man for Man's sake died,--wherever
Death stayed the march of upward-climbing feet,
Leaving their Present incomplete,
But through far Futures crowning their endeavor,--
Their ghostly voices to our ears are sent,
As when the high note of a trumpet wrings
AEolian answers from the strings
Of many a mute, unfingered instrument!
Plataean cymbals thrill for us to-day;
The horns of Sempach in our echoes play,
And nearer yet, and sharper, and more stern,
The slogan rings that startled Bannockburn;
Till from the field, made green with kindred deed,
The shields are clashed in exultation
Above the dauntless Nation.,
That for a Continent has fought its Runnymede!
VIII

Aye, for a Continent! The heart that beats
With such rich blood of sacrifice
Shall, from the Tropics, drowsed with languid heats,
To the blue ramparts of the Northern ice,
Make felt its pulses, all this young world over!--
Shall thrill, and shake, and sway
Each land that bourgeons in the Western day,
Whatever flat may float, whatever shield my cover!
With fuller manhood every wind is rife,
In every soil are sown the seeds of valor,
Since out of death came forth such boundless life,
Such ruddy beauty out of anguished pallor!
And that first deed, along the Southern wave,
Spoiled not the sister-land, but lent an arm to save!
IX

Now, in her seat secure,
Where distant menaces no more can reach her,
Our land, in undivided freedom pure,
Becomes the unwilling world's unconscious teacher;
And, day by day, beneath serener skies,
The unshaken pillars of her palace rise,--
The Doric shafts, that lightly upward press,
And hide in grace their giant massiveness.
What though the sword has hewn each corner-stone,
And precious blood cements the deep foundation!
Never by other force have empires grown;
From other basis never rose a nation!
For strength is born of struggle, faith of doubt,
Of discord law, and freedom of oppression:
We hail from Pisgah, with exulting shout,
The Promised Land below us, bright with sun,
And deem its pastures won,
Ere toil and blood have earned us their possession!
Each aspiration of our human earth
Becomes an act through keenest pangs of birth;
Each force, to bless, must cease to be a dream
And conquer life through agony supreme;
Each inborn right must outwardly be tested
By stern material weapons, ere it stand
In the enduring fabric of the land,
Secured for these who yielded it, and those who wrested!
X

This they have done for us who slumber here,--
Awake, alive, though now so dumbly sleeping;
Spreading the board, but tasting not its cheer,
Sowing, but never reaping;--
Building, but never sitting in the shade
Of the strong mansion they have made;--
Speaking their word of life with mighty tongue,
But hearing not the echo, million-voiced,
Of brothers who rejoiced,
From all our river vales and mountains flung!
Open your ranks, let every shining troop
Its phantom banners droop,
To hail Earth's noblest martyrs, and her last!
Take them, O Fatherland!
Who, dying, conquered in thy name;
And, with a grateful hand,
Inscribe their deed who took away thy blame,--
Give, for their grandest all, thine insufficient fame!
Take them, O God! our Brave,
The glad fulfillers of Thy dread decree;
Who grasped the sword for Peace, and smote to save,
And, dying here for Freedom, also died for Thee!