Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful:  ’Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved?  Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!’
  Life may be given in many ways,
  And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
    So bountiful is Fate; 140
    But then to stand beside her,
    When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
    This shows, methinks, God’s plan
    And measure of a stalwart man,
    Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
    Who stands self-poised on manhood’s solid earth,
  Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

VI

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150
    Whom late the Nation he had led. 
    With ashes on her head,
Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 
    Nature, they say, doth dote,
    And cannot make a man
    Save on some worn-out plan,
    Repeating as by rote:  160
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
    And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
    Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true,
    How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
    Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170
    But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 
    They knew that outward grace is dust;
    They could not choose but trust
In that sure-footed mind’s unfaltering skill,
    And supple-tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. 
    His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
    Thrusting to thin air o’er our cloudy bars,
    A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 180
    Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
    Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 
        Nothing of Europe here,
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
    Ere any names of Serf and Peer
    Could Nature’s equal scheme deface
    And thwart her genial will;
    Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face. 190
    I praise him not; it were too late;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory