“Think you these felt no charms In their gray homesteads and embowered farms? In household faces waiting at the door Their evening step should lighten up no more? In fields their boyish feet had known? In trees their fathers’ hands had set, And which with them had grown, Widening each year their leafy coronet? Felt they no pang of passionate regret For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own? These things are dear to every man that lives, And life prized more for what it lends than gives. Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet, Strove to detain their fatal feet; And yet the enduring half they chose, Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king, The invisible things of God before the seen and known: Therefore their memory inspiration blows With echoes gathering on from zone to zone; For manhood is the one immortal thing Beneath Time’s changeful sky, And, where it lightened once, from age to age, Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage, That length of days is knowing when to die.” LOWELL, _Concord Ode_. ADDRESS DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867 FELLOW CITIZENS: The day is in Concord doubly our calendar day, as being the anniversary of the invasion of the town by the British troops in 1775, and of the departure of the company of volunteers for Washington, in 1861. We are all pretty well aware that the facts which make to us the interest of this day are in a great degree personal and local here; that every other town and city has its own heroes and memorial days, and that we can hardly expect a wide sympathy for the names and anecdotes which we delight to record. We are glad and proud that we have no monopoly of merit. We are thankful that other towns and cities are as rich; that the heroes of old and of recent date, who made and kept America free and united, were not rare or solitary growths, but sporadic over vast tracts of the Republic. Yet, as it is a piece of nature and the common sense that the throbbing chord that holds us to our kindred, our friends and our town, is not to be denied or resisted,—no matter how frivolous or unphilosophical its pulses,—we shall cling affectionately to our houses, our river and pastures, and believe that our visitors will pardon us if we take the privilege of talking freely about our nearest neighbors as in a family party;—well assured, meantime, that the virtues we are met to honor were directed on aims which command the sympathy of every loyal American citizen, were exerted for the protection of our common country, and aided its triumph.