Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

Commemoration Ode

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

LIFE may be given in many ways,

And loyalty to Truth be sealed

As bravely in the closet as the field,

So generous is Fate;

But then to stand beside her,

When craven churls deride her,

To front a lie in arms, and not to yield,—

This shows, methinks, God’s plan

And measure of a stalwart man,

Limbed like the old heroic breeds,

Who stand self-poised on manhood’s solid earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,

Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,

With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:

Forgive me, if from present things I turn

To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,

And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.

Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man

Save on some worn-out plan,

Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

How beautiful to see

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 seamark now, now lost in vapors 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 still,

Ere any names of Serf and Peer

Could Nature’s equal scheme deface;

Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,

Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,

Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes:

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American.

We sit here in the Promised Land

That flows with Freedom’s honey and milk;

But ’twas they won it, sword in hand,

Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.

We welcome back our bravest and our best;—

Ah, me! not all! some come not with the rest,

Who went forth brave and bright as any here!

I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,

But the sad strings complain,

And will not please the ear;

I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane

Again and yet again

Into a dirge, and die away in pain.

In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,

Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,

Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:

Fitlier may others greet the living,

For me the past is unforgiving;

I with uncovered head

Salute the sacred dead,

Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!

’Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,

But the high faith that failed not by the way;

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 staid behind.

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!

For never shall their aureoled presence lack:

I see them muster in a gleaming row,

With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;

We find in our dull road their shining track;

In every nobler mood

We feel the orient of their spirit glow,

Part of our life’s unalterable good,

Of all our saintlier aspiration;

They come transfigured back,

Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays

Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

Not in anger, not in pride,

Pure from passion’s mixture rude

Ever to base earth allied,

But with far-heard gratitude,

Still with heart and voice renewed,

To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,

The strain should close that consecrates our brave.

Lift the heart and lift the head!

Lofty be its mood and grave,

Not without a martial ring,

Not without a prouder tread

And a peal of exultation:

Little right has he to sing

Through whose heart in such an hour

Beats no march of conscious power,

Sweeps no tumult of elation!

’Tis 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 day 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 ’tis her dower!

How could poet ever tower,

If his passions, hopes, and fears,

If his triumphs and his tears,

Kept not measure with his people?

Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!

Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!

Banners, adance 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,

She of the open soul and open door,

With room about her hearth for all mankind!

The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;

From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,

Send all her handmaid armies back to spin,

And bid 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 scorn

Plays on her mouth, as round her mighty knees

She calls her children back, and waits the morn

Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.”

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!

Thy God, in these distempered days,

Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of his ways,

And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!

Bow down in prayer and praise!

O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair

O’er such sweet brows as never other wore,

And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath’s pale eclipse,

The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,

What words divine of lover or of poet

Could tell our love and make thee know it,

Among the Nations bright beyond compare?

What were our lives without thee?

What all our lives to save thee?

We reck not what we gave thee;

We will not dare to doubt thee,

But ask whatever else, and we will dare!