The American Union SpeakerPhilbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
General
The American Union Speaker
Philbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
Recitations
We dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we
admired, and prized, and venerated in them, can never be forgotten. I had
almost said that they are now beginning to live; to live that life of
unimpaired influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which
their talents and services were destined. Such men do not, cannot die. To
be cold and breathless; to feel not and speak not; this is not the end of
existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions
of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the
age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public
prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren
dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his
gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over
the field of honors with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of
liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the
shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow
house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand
that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the
eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that
conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make
it life to live," these cannot expire;--
"These shall resist the empire of decay,
When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away;
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once can never die."
E. Everett.
LXXXVI.
THE INDIAN CHIEF TO THE WHITE SETTLER.
Think of the country for which the Indians fought! Who can blame them? As
Philip looked down from his seat on Mount Hope, that glorious eminence,
that
----" throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"--
as he looked down, and beheld the lovely scene which spread beneath, at a
summer sunset, the distant hill-tops glittering as with fire, the slanting
beams streaming across the waters, the broad plains, the island groups, the
majestic forest,--could he be blamed, if his heart burned within him, as he
beheld it all passing, by no tardy process, from beneath his control, into
the hands of the stranger?
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