Flight the Fourth. Charles Sumner

The first draft of the first poem was made March 30, 1874. It did not satisfy the poet, for he wrote, April 2: “I have been trying to write something about Sumner, but to little purpose. I cannot collect my faculties.”

GARLANDS upon his grave

And flowers upon his hearse,

And to the tender heart and brave

The tribute of this verse.

His was the troubled life,

The conflict and the pain,

The grief, the bitterness of strife,

The honor without stain.

Like Winkelried, he took

Into his manly breast

The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke

A path for the oppressed.

Then from the fatal field

Upon a nation’s heart

Borne like a warrior on his shield!—

So should the brave depart.

Death takes us by surprise,

And stays our hurrying feet;

The great design unfinished lies,

Our lives are incomplete.

But in the dark unknown

Perfect their circles seem,

Even as a bridge’s arch of stone

Is rounded in the stream.

Alike are life and death,

When life in death survives,

And the uninterrupted breath

Inspires a thousand lives.

Were a star quenched on high,

For ages would its light,

Still travelling downward from the sky,

Shine on our mortal sight.

So when a great man dies,

For years beyond our ken,

The light he leaves behind him lies

Upon the paths of men.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD