Classic Poem

LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL

L INCOLN , the great Republic's luminous front,
With new confirming of the people moved
Re-chosen and re-consecrate, and flung
Shadows of apprehension and despair
Along the pathway of Secession's armies.

Beyond the intrenching lines round Petersburg
The Southern soldiers heard the Northern troops
Greeting the Inauguration with loud cheers.
And though defiance clung to bristling arms,
The dauntless spirits of the Confederates
Felt the on-coming darkling certainty.
And over all the ceaseless cannonry
And the incessant flash of musketry,
The awesome soul and the prophetic voice
Of Lincoln through his second Inaugural
Sounded in one the voices of all souls
That felt the rising tides of destiny
Resistless and inviolate as the sea.

The Mighty Captain saw prophetic hand
Writing across the heavens against the dark
The fiery uncials fate interpreted.
The Second Inaugural framed exterior phrase
Of the interior coursings of Lee's mind
Through months incarnadine. A man of God
By faith and by surrender could he miss
The inflowing tides of Providential Will
Beating against the shore-line of events?
And could he fail to know, when high lights fell
Across the skies, the Presence and the Power?

High lights had fallen. Justice was not less
Because of love. Nor was love less because
Of judgment, love's expression self-compelled.
Throughout his sensive nature Lee discerned
" God saith " behind the Second Inaugural;
And Lee was God's enough to understand.
'Twas that which later his proud spirit heard
At Appomattox when the flinty rock

Of ancient custom and imperious mood
Was smitten with the rod of kindliness,
And forth the living waters gushed and spread
With satisfying virtue every waste; —
At Appomattox when the victor's lips
Breathed the keynote of Christian charity,
And all the earth was flushed with the New Day.

Had not Lee deprecated Slavery,
Disunion and the arbitrament of War?
Had he not drawn his sword against his will
As truly as against the Nation's will
And his and her strong voices of dissent?
And daily from Seven Pines to Petersburg,
Had he not augured the predestined end
By all the laws of Nature's Decalogue?
Never had he believed that Southern arms
Alone could win the conflict. Well he knew
The force gigantic of the Northern States
Would surely crush at last Secession's strength
Unless some Foreign Power should intervene.
But such consideration made with him
No difference. The South had principles
And rights most sacred to defend and hold,
And Duty bound him to his best essay
Even though he perished in the vain attempt.
Thus was his soul's philosophy declared
By his own lips with solemn utterance
Across the great Surrender's nearing verge,
And lastingly inscribed on history's page.

He knew the chronicles of centuries,
And the stern law that retribution full
Must fall on every creature set against
Dominion of the Spiritual Order.
But never in the past had he conceived
As now the astounding vastness of events,
God's thought, Love's purpose, Truth's exceeding power,
Compulsion of eternal strategies
To save a world on self-destruction bent.

LEE AND LINCOLN

They were great souls transcendent of events,
Lincoln and Lee. Across embattled fields
Both Lee and Grant were Captains front to front
Upon the levels where men's arms were steel,
Where instruments of strife were flesh and blood —
Material forces for material ends.
But Lee and Lincoln were antagonists
Above the plane of wonted armaments.
They faced each other from opposing heights
Of spirit, full-equipped with weaponry
Shaped in the Armory of Providence
And given to each by the Invisibles
That frame the mystic goings forth of power
For sake of or against the ethical
And basic harmonies of history.
Into this high arena of the spirit
Could enter none of lesser psychic mold —
Nor Grant nor Davis — only they alone
Who feeling after the hid mind of God
Above earth's clouds and darkness, had perceived
The White Battalions' mediate pageantry.

They were great souls — those seers of destiny,
Who heard the music of the Morning Stars
And the far shoutings of the Sons of God —
Lincoln and Lee. And thus at last they stood
Upon the mountains as the New Day dawned,
Over against each other, face to face,
Dissevered by contending principles,
But in their ordered places situate —
Perceiving by a forced enlightenment
That history is the judgment of the world —
And working out together swervelessly
The Will of God that rode the battle thunders.

THE FULNESS OF TIME

When Lee beheld the Nation's Chief draw forth
His Second Inaugural Sword of living flame,
His two-edged sword of Justice and of Mercy,
And flash Truth's awesome lightnings cross the world,
He saw as he had never seen before
The approaching end, the fulness of the time.

Justice and Mercy! History's Covenants!
The Eternal Symbols of Theocracy
That give's Democracy its certain life!

Sensing the Power behind the Inaugural,
Lee felt the ceremonial aftermath
Take to itself, as from the heavenlies,
A new and sanctified significance.
He saw the great Re-chosen of the people
With regnant hand uplifted reverently,
With fervent lips pressing the Sacred Page,
And swearing faithfully to execute
His office, and preserve, protect, defend
The Constitution of the United States.

The Holy Scriptures and the Constitution,
The two great Charters of Democracy,
The two supreme defenses of the people!

And Lee, though distant yet more finely near
Than all his Southern peers, beheld unblanched
The tempest-tossed Confederate Ship of State
Dashing to pieces on the rocks of war.
He knew the fulness of the time had come —
God's time, the Nation's, and likewise his own,
High Love's and Wisdom's and the trembling South's.
And yet he trembled not, knowing himself
God's, and remembering the compulsive Power —
Resistless though it seemed resistible —
That spoke in still small voice where thunder flame
Had shaken the mountains, laid the valleys waste,
And whelmed with red confusion sun and stars —
The still small voice that mystically broke
Heaven's silence midst the earth's discordances.