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 thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapor's 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 Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, Feeling its challenged pulses leap, While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we in Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave; No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack: I see them muster in a gleaming row, In every nobler mood They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, Shall we to more continuance make pretence? Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe; Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest SOW. But, when we vanish hence, Or deepen pansies for a year or two, Such short-lived service, as if blind events dure; She claims a more divine investiture Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind; Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years; But that high privilege that makes all men peers, That leap of heart whereby a people rise That swift validity in noble veins, Not in anger, not in pride, But with far-heard gratitude, Lift the heart and lift the head! Lofty be its mood and grave, T'is no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower! How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple ! Banners, a-dance with triumph, bend your staves! And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver: "Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more; From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies, that so lately hurled Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore. No challenge sends she to the elder world, That looked askance and hated; a light |