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, Savoring 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 Ah, who shall tell the tale of those wild years, Of pride and grief, of blood and tears? The horror and the splendor and the sorrow, The marching-songs of midnight, the sick fears Of every fateful morrow? Sometimes a waft of song, a random strain, Suddenly lifts a curtain in the brain: Some sweet old homesick soldier-ballad, one Beloved of many a sunburnt longing son Of Michigan or Maine, Or that light laughing tune wherewith the South Fifed her boy-soldiers blithe to the cannon’s mouth,-- Suddenly all is real once more, The hoping, the despairing, The pity and the passion and the daring, And all the agony of the Brother-War! V