The eleventh hour in the life of Julia Ward HoweElliott, Maud Howe
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The eleventh hour in the life of Julia Ward Howe
Elliott, Maud Howe
Howe, Julia Ward, 1819-1910
In April, 1910, she wrote the third and last of her poems to her
beloved friend and “Minister” James Freeman Clarke. She read this poem
twice, at the centenary celebration of Mr. Clarke’s birth held at the
Church of the Disciples, April 3rd, and the day after at the Arlington
St. Church. Compared with the verses written for Mr. Clarke’s fiftieth
birthday and with those celebrating his seventieth birthday, this
latest poem is to me the best. The opening lines bite right into the
heart of the matter; as she read them standing in the pulpit a thrill
passed through the congregation of her fellow disciples gathered
together in memory of their founder.
Richer gift can no man give
Than he doth from God receive.
We in greatness would have pleasure,
But we must accept our measure.
Let us question, then, the grave,
Querying what the Master gave,
Whom, in his immortal state,
Grateful love would celebrate.
Only human life was his,
With its thin-worn mysteries.
* * * * *
Lifting from the Past its veil,
What of his does now avail?
Just a mirror in his breast
That revealed a heavenly guest,
And the love that made us free
Of the same high company.
The poem on Abraham Lincoln written for the Lincoln Centenary and read
by her at the meeting in Symphony Hall, Boston, February 12th, 1909,
is perhaps the best of the innumerable memorial poems she composed. As
one by one the centenaries of this and that member of the band of great
men and women who made our country illustrious in the 19th Century were
celebrated, it came to be considered as a matter of course that she,
almost the last survivor of that noble company, should write a poem for
the occasion. So difficult a critic as Professor Barrett Wendell said
to me that he considered some of the stanzas of the Lincoln poem as
good as the Battle Hymn. I remember he particularly liked the last two
verses,
A treacherous shot, a sob of rest,
A martyr’s palm upon his breast,
A welcome from the glorious seat
Where blameless souls of heroes meet;
And, thrilling through unmeasured days,
A song of gratitude and praise;
A cry that all the earth shall heed,
To God, who gave him for our need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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