The centuries pass, yea as a dream they pass. Nations and races, with all that they have sown, Sink as the prairie-grass, By the invisible scythe silently mown. The wind breathes over them, and the place thereof Knows them no more. But the unsounded sky still broods above, Blue ocean without shore, Eternal in its breadth and depth and fire of love. So the o’erbrooding Soul, purely ablaze, Full-flooded with the light of God, Outlasts Man’s body and all his works and ways, Outlasts this little earth whereon he trod. II We come not, then, to praise That which transcends our praises, but to crave The light of one great soul, kind as the sky, Upon these later days,-- Not like the simpler time gone by, But set with snares of sense and ease, And crowded with poor phantom flatteries That serve us, and enslave. We come, forgetting for a while Our million-peopled cities, pile on pile Upsoaring starry-windowed in the night To perilous Babel-height; We come, forgetting all our new-found powers, The magic of the mastery that is ours, The shoes of swiftness we may lightly wear, And that fresh-captived Ariel of the air, All, all that makes Man’s face to shine With pride of conquest, flushing him as wine,-- We come, forgetting all, a little while To look in Lincoln’s eyes, So loving-sad, so kindly-wise; To stand, as judged, before his patient smile; Until his large mould shames us, and we know We are as children, yet have hope to grow, Since this may be the stature of a man. III Strangely his life began, Rough-cradled in the savage wood. Haply our foolish softness grieves O’er much that he found good, The hut of logs, the bed of leaves. By the faint candle, or the winter’s fire, He groped to his desire, The long, lean, sallow, knowledge-hungry lad, Deerskin or homespun clad. Slow-stumbling upward, in good time he grew To that just man his little city knew, His plain, persuasive speech Shaped by an instinct none could ever teach, Savouring of honest earth, and sharp with wilding jest. Then came his country’s call. Humble and hesitant, in doubt and dread, And stooping that tall head Black-ruffled like the eagle’s crest, He passed up to the highest place of all. IV