The mingling of proud humility, tenderness, and reverence, the throbbing passion and the exultant fervor of the concluding verses, lift this ode to a high place in American poetry, it may be to the highest place. To the many, however, the chief value of _The Commemoration Ode_ lies in the stanza on Lincoln. So just as an estimate of character, so restrained in its accents of praise, American in all finer meanings of the word, splendid in its imagery and poignant in the note of grief, this beautiful tribute to the great president is final and satisfying. The first of the _Three Memorial Poems_ is an ‘Ode, read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at Concord.’ In the opening stanzas on Freedom the poet strikes the notes of exultation fitting the time and the place, then passes to those inevitable allusions which appeal to local pride (and Lowell handles this passage with utmost skill), draws the lesson that must of necessity be drawn from the ‘home-spun deeds’ of the men of old, makes Freedom utter her warning to the men of the present, and, no prophet of evil, closes in the triumphant spirit in which he began. ‘Under the Old Elm’ is a magnificent tribute to a man so great that there is need of odes like this to help us comprehend his greatness. After calling up the scene when Washington, ‘a stranger among strangers,’ stood beneath that legendary tree to take command of his army, ‘all of captains,’ a motley rout, valorous deacons, selectmen, and village heroes among others, more skilled in debating their orders than obeying them, good fighters all, but ‘serious drill’s despair,’--the poet chants those beautiful lines in which is drawn the distinction between ‘Nation’ and ‘Country.’ The one is fashioned of computable things, good each in its kind and important in its place:-- But Country is a shape of each man’s mind Sacred from definition, unconfined By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries grind; An inward vision, yet an outward birth Of sweet familiar heaven and earth; A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind Of wings within our embryo being’s shell That wait but her completer spell To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare Life’s nobler spaces and untarnished air. You who hold dear this self-conceived ideal, Whose faith and works alone can make it real, Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. When all have done their utmost, surely he Hath given the best who gives a character Erect and constant, which nor any shock Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir From its deep bases in the living rock Of ancient manhood’s sweet security....