The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1875-07-24
POETRY.
From Lowells "Under the Great Elm."1
Washington, Soldier and Statesman.

What figure more immovably august
Than that grave strength SO Patiene anu 80 pure
Galm in good fortune when u w ave sure
That soul serene, impenetrapy 1uss,
Modelled on classic lines so SIMPLE they endure?
That sonl so softly radiant and so white
The track it left seems less OF fire than light?
Cold but to such as love distemperature?
And if pure light, as some deem, be the force
That drives rejoicing planets on their course.
Why for his power benign GEEK an inquirer source?
His was the true enthusiasm that burns long,
Domestically bright,
Fed from itself and shy of human sight,
The hidden force that makes lifetime strong,
And not the short-lived fuel of song.
Passlonless say you? What is passion for
But to sublime our natures and control,
10 front heroic tolls with late return,
VI none, or such as shames the conqueror?
That fire was fed with substance of the soul
And Al not with holiday stubble, that could burn
through seven slow years OF unadvancing war,
Equal when fields were lost or fields were won,
With breath of popular applause or blame,
Nor famed nor damped, unquenchably the same,
loo inward to be reached by flaws OF idle lame.
Soldier and statesman. rarest unison;
High-poised example of great duties done
Simply as breathing, worlds honors worn
AS lies Indifferent gifts to all men born;
Dumb for himself, unless it were to God,
But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent
Iramping the snow to coral where they trod,
Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content;
Modest, yet firm Natures self; unbalanced
Save by the men his nobler temper shamed;
Not honored then or now because he woOed
The popular voice, but that he still withstood;
DrOou-lnluu6u, HuS1er sOuleC, Uner6 Is DuU one
Who was all this and ours, and all men's-Washing-
ton.
Virginia gave us this imperial man
Cast in the mighty mould
OF those hgh-statured ages old
Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran;
She gave us this unblemished gentleman;
What shall we give her back but love and praise
As in the dear old unestranged days
Before the inevitable wrong began?
Mother of states and undminished men,
Thou gavest us country, giving him.
And we owe Away what we owed thee then;
The boon thou wouldst have snatched from us again.
Shines as before withno abatement dim.
great mans memory is the only thing
With influence to outlast the present whim
And bind us when here he knit our golden ring.
ALI Of him that was subject to the hours
Lies IN thy soil and makes It part of ours;
Across more recent graves,
Where unresentful Nature waves
Her pennons or the shot-ploughed sod,
Proclaiming the sweet Truce Of God
We from this consecrated plain stretch out
Our hands as free from afterthought or Doubt
As here the united north
Poured her embrOwned manhood forth
In welcome of our saviour and thy son,
Through battle we have better learned thy WORTH
The deep-set courage and undaunted will
Which, like his own, the days disaster done,
Gould, safe in manhood, suffer and be still
Both thine and ours the victory hardly won;
II ever with distempered voice or pen
We have misdeemed thee, here we take it back
And for the dead of both don common black
Be TO us evermore as thou vast then
As we forget thou hast not always been,
Mother of states and unpolluted men,
virginia, ftly named from England's manly queen!
Atlantic for august.