No flutter of the banners bold, Borne by the lusty sons of old, The haughty conquerors Sent forward to their wars; Not his their blare, their pageantries, Their goal, their glory, was not his; Humbly he came to keep The flocks, to fold the sheep. The need comes not without the man; The prescient hours unceasing ran, And up the way of tears He came into the years, Our pastoral captain, skilled to crook The spear into the pruning hook, The simple, kindly man, Lincoln, American. [31] _By permission of 'The Interior,' Chicago._ MAJESTIC IN HIS INDIVIDUALITY BY J. P. NEWMAN Human glory is often fickle as the winds, and transient as a summer day, but Abraham Lincoln's place in history is assured. All the symbols of this world's admiration are his. He is embalmed in song; recorded in history; eulogized in panegyric; cast in bronze; sculptured in marble; painted on canvas; enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen, and lives in the memories of mankind. Some men are brilliant in their times, but their words and deeds are of little worth to history; but his mission was as large as his country, vast as humanity, enduring as time. No greater thought can ever enter the human mind than obedience to law and freedom for all. Some men are not honored by their contemporaries, and die neglected. Here is one more honored than any other man while living, more revered when dying, and destined to be loved to the last syllable of recorded time. He has this three-fold greatness,--great in life, great in death, great in the history of the world. Lincoln will grow upon the attention and affections of posterity, because he saved the life of the greatest nation, whose ever-widening influence is to bless humanity. Measured by this standard, Lincoln shall live in history from age to age. Great men appear in groups, and in groups they disappear from the vision of the world; but we do not love or hate men in groups. We speak of Gutenberg and his coadjutors, of Washington and his generals, of Lincoln and his cabinet: but when the day of judgment comes, we crown the inventor of printing; we place the laurel on the brow of the father of his country, and the chaplet of renown upon the head of the saviour of the Republic. Some men are great from the littleness of their surroundings; but he only is great who is great amid greatness. Lincoln had great associates,--Seward, the sagacious diplomatist; Chase, the eminent financier; Stanton, the incomparable Secretary of War; with illustrious Senators and soldiers. Neither could take his part nor fill his position. And the same law of the coming and going of great men is true of our own day. In piping times of peace, genius is not aflame, and true greatness is not apparent; but when the crisis comes, then God lifts the curtain from obscurity, and reveals the man for the hour.