Its features human with familiar light,

A man, beyond the historian's art to kill,
Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel-blight.

3.

60 Sure the dumb earth hath memory, for naught
Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom
Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom
Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought
Into the seamless tapestry of thought.

65 So charmed, with undeluded eye we see
In history's fragmentary tale

Bright clews of continuity,

Learn that high natures over Time prevail,
And feel ourselves a link in that entail

70 That binds all ages past with all that are to be.

III.

1.

Beneath our consecrated elm

A century ago he stood,

Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood Whose red surge sought, but could not overwhelm 75 The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn

helm :

From colleges, where now the gown

73. Referring to Braddock's defeat, when Washington wrote to his brother: "By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped unhurt, although death was levelling my companions on every side of me."

76. Study in Cambridge was suspended, the buildings used as barracks, and the students sent to Concord.

To arms had yielded, from the town,

Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. 80 No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone To bridle others' clamors and his own, Firmly erect, he towered above them all, The incarnate discipline that was to free 85 With iron curb that armed democracy.

2.

A motley rout was that which came to stare,
In raiment tanned by years of sun and storm,
Of every shape that was not uniform,
Dotted with regimentals here and there;
90 An army all of captains, used to pray

And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair,
Skilled to debate their orders, not obey;
Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note
In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods,
95 Ready to settle Freewill by a vote,

But largely liberal to its private moods;
Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen,
Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen,
Nor much fastidious as to how aud when:
100 Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create
A thought-staid army or a lasting state:
Haughty they said he was, at first; severe;
But owned, as all men own, the steady hand
Upon the bridle patient to command,

86. The letters of Washington and of other generals in the early part of the Revolutionary war, bear repeated witness to the undisciplined character of the troops. "I found a mixed multi tude of people here," writes Washington, July 27th, "under very little discipline, order, or government."

105 Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear, And learned to honor first, then love him, then

revere.

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint
And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint.

3.

Musing beneath the legendary tree,

110 The years between furl off: I seem to see

The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through,
Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue

And weave prophetic aureoles round the head
That shines our beacon now nor darkens with the
dead.

115 O man of silent mood,

A stranger among strangers then,

How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, Familiar as the day in all the homes of men! The winged years, that winnow praise and blame, 120 Blow many names out: they but fan to flame The self-renewing splendors of thy fame.

IV.

1.

How many subtlest influences unite,
With spiritual touch of joy or pain,
Invisible as air and soft as light,

125 To body forth that image of the brain

112. The American colors in the Revolution were buff and blue. Fox wore them in Parliament, as did Burke also on occaBion. There is discussion as to the origin of the colors, for which see Stanhope's Miscellanies, First Series, pp. 116-122, and Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Jan. 1859, pp. 149-154.

We call our Country, visionary shape,

Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than wine,
Whose charm can none define,

Nor any, though he flee it, can escape!
130 All party-colored threads the weaver Time
Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime,
All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears,
Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea,
A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree,
135 The casual gleanings of unreckoned years,
Take goddess-shape at last and there is She,
Old at our birth, new as the springing hours,
Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our powers,
Consoler, kindler, peerless 'mid her peers,
140 A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs,
A life to give ours permanence, when we
Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers,
And all this glowing world goes with us on our
biers.

2.

Nations are long results, by ruder ways

145 Gathering the might that warrants length of days: They may be pieced of half-reluctant shares

Welded by hammer-strokes of broad-brained kings,
Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs
Of wise traditions widening cautious rings;

50 At best they are computable things,

A strength behind us making us feel bold

In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; Whose force by figures may be summed and told So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, 155 And we but drops that bear compulsory part In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart; But Country is a shape of each man's mind

Sacred from definition, unconfined

By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries

grind;

160 An inward vision, yet an outward birth

Of sweet familiar heaven and earth;

A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind
Of wings within our embryo being's shell
That wait but her completer spell

165 To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare
Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air.

3.

You, who hold dear this self-conceived ideal, Whose faith and works alone can make it real, Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine 170 Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. When all have done their utmost, surely he Hath given the best who gives a character 175 Erect and constant, which nor any shock Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir From its deep bases in the living rock Of ancient manhood's sweet security:

180 And this he gave, serenely far from pride

As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied,
Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide

4.

No bond of men as common pride so strong, In names time-filtered for the lips of song, 85 Still operant, with the primal Forces bound, Whose currents, on their spiritual round, Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid: