The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-12-21
TIE GREELEY MONUMENT.

THE following is the poem read by Ed
Clarence Stedman at the unveiling, in G
wood Cemetery, of the Printers Monume
Horace Greeley:
Once more, dear Mother Earth, we stand
In reverence where thy bounty gave
Our brother, yielded to thy hand,
The sweet protection Of the grave!
Well hast thou soothed him through the yea
The years our love and sorrow number
And with thy smiles, and with thy tears.
Made green and fai: his place OF slumber
Thine be the keeping of that trust;
And ours this image born Of Art
To shine above his hidden dust,
What time the sunrise breezes part
The trees, and with new light enwreathe
Ion head until the lips are golden,
And from them music seems to breathe
As from the desert statue olden.
Would ii were so! that now we might
Hear once his uttered voice again,
Or hold him present to our sight,
Nor reach with empty hands and vain!
o that, from some far place, were heard
One cadence of his speech returning
A whispered tone a single word,
Sent back in answer to our vearning.
1t may not be? What then, the spark,
The essence which illumed the whole,
And made his living form lts mark
And outward likeness: What the soul
That warmed the heart and poised the head,
And spoke the thoughts we now inherit?
prf,,k Co.. ,,,Fts 4 81,
Where art thou now, elusive Spirit?
Where, now. the sunburst Of love
Which blended still with sudden wrath
To nerve the righteous hand that strove,
And blaze in the oppressor>s paths
Fair Earth, our dust is thine Indeed!
Too soon he reached the vOiccless portal -
That whittier lead-: Where lies the mead
He gained, and knew himself immortal?
Or tell US, on what distant star,
Where even as here are toll and wrong,
With strength renewed he lifts afar
A voice of aid, war-cry strongf
What fruit, this stern OlyIhpiad past,
Has that rich nature elsewhere yielded,
What conquest gained and knowledge vast,
What kindred beings loved and shielded?
Why seek 10 know: he little sought,
Himse!f, to lift the close drawn vail,
Nor for his own salvation wrought
And pleaded ay, and wore his mail;
No selfish grasp of life, no fear,
Won for mankind his ceaseless caring,
But for themselves he held them dear
Their birth and shrouded exit sharing.
Not his the feverish wish to live
A SUMMER lie a longer space,
Save that the Eternal Law might give
The boon in common to his race.
Earth, twas thy heaven he loved. and best
Thy precious offs pring man and woman,
And labor for them seemed but rest
To him. whose nature was so human.
Even here his spirit haply longed
To stay, remembered by our kind,
And Where the haunts of men are thrOnged
Move yet among them. Seek and find
A presence, thOagh his voice has ceased,
Still, even where we dwell remaining,
With all its tendercst thrills increased
And all it cared to ask, obtaining.
List, how the varied things that took
Tie impress of his passion rare
Make answer! TO the roadwAys look,
The watercd wales, the hamlets fair.
He walks unseen the living woods,
The fields, the town, the shaded borough,
And in the pastoral soitudes
Delights to view the lengthening furrow.
The fai hful East that cradled him,
still. while she deems her nursling sleeps,
Sit by his couch with vision dim;
The plenteous West his feast-day keeps;
The wistful South recalls the ways
OF one who in his love enwOund her,
And stayed he, in the evil days,
With arms of comfort thrown around her.
He lives wherever men to men
In perilous hours his words repeat,
Where clangs the forge, ~here glides the pei
Where toll and traffic c -owd the street;
And in whatever time or place
Earths pu-est souls their purpose strength
bOTE the broad pathway Of our race
The shadow of his name shall lengthen.
Still with usy'' all the liegrmen cry
Who read his heart and held him dear;
The hills declare, He shall not diet
The prairies answer, = He is herc!"
Immortal thus, no dread of fate
Be ours. no vain memcnto mort;
Life Life not Death, we COnsecrate-
A lasting presence touched with glory.
The star may vanish-but Il ray,
Sent forth, what mandate can recall?
The circling wave still keeps its way
That marked turret's seaward fall
! l,a nf 10 II 81
Is part of Natures voice forever;
| And aye beyond the grave remains
| The great, the good mans high endeavor!
Well may the brooding Earth retake
The form we knew to be part
| OF bloom and herbage, fern and brake,
New lives that from her being start.
! Naught OF the soul shall there remain;
They came on void and darkness solely
Who the vailed Spirit sought in vain,
| Within the temples shrine most Holy.
| That. that, has found again the source
! From which itself to us was lent;
| The power that, in perpetual course,
Makes of the dust an instrument
Supreme; the universal soul;
The current infinite and single
Wherein, as ages onward roll,
Life, Thought and Will forever mingle.
What more is left to keep our hold
On him who was so true and strong'
This scmbl nee, raised above the mold
With offerings meet Of word and song,
! That men m iy teach, in aftertime,
Their sons how goodness marked the feat
Or one whose life was made sublime
By service for his brother creatures.
And last, and lordliest, his fame
A station in the starry line
OF heroe. that have left name
Men conjure with-a place divine,
Since, in the worlds eternal plan.
Divinity itself is given
To HIM who lives or dies for Man,
lp,Es in his spul for Heaven