Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia): Delivered in the House of Representatives and in the Senate,; Fifty-Second Congress, First SessionVarious
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Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia): Delivered in the House of Representatives and in the Senate,; Fifty-Second Congress, First Session
Various
Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh, 1837-1891
What higher eulogy can be pronounced on any man than that in every
station, public and private, he was true to himself and faithful to the
people and was equal to the duties of his station? Not every man can
become great; genius is the gift of the few, but goodness and fidelity
to duty are within the reach of all. He has gone the way of all the
living. He has found the level of the grave. Our words of eulogy can not
reach him there.
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flatt'ry soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
Solomon, summing up this question, said:
For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any
thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them
is forgotten.
Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished;
neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is
done under the sun.
To human reason the death of him we mourn was untimely. He was born May
31, 1837, and died October 15, 1891. He was therefore in the prime of
manhood, and apparently had many years of useful life before him. But
death sometimes strangely selects his victims. No season, no station, no
age is exempt from his fatal shafts. When death comes to the aged as the
end of a fully completed life we regard it as natural. But when death
comes to the young, the gifted, and the promising, we with our finite
vision look upon it as sad and mysterious. We are constantly reminded
that--
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
It is creditable to our humanity that at the grave animosities are
buried, and those who speak of the dead remember their virtues and pass
over their frailties.
Death is a mighty mediator. There all the flames of rage are
extinguished, hatred is appeased, and angelic pity, like a weeping
sister, bends with gentle and close embrace over the funeral urn.
The reconciling grave swallows distinction first that made us foes;
there all lie down in peace together.
To the grave, "the world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil,"
we are all hastening. Earth's highest station and meanest place ends in
the common receptacle to which we shall all be taken. Dark and gloomy
indeed would be the grave without a hope in a personal immortality, a
belief that the soul survives the body, and that to this immortal part
the tomb is the gate to heaven. When one feels like Theodore Parker when
he said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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