UNVEILING THE MONUMENT.
I.
The monument stands, no longer the care
Of mallet and chisel and plummet and square.
With a flourish of trumpets and rolling of drums
The glad hour comes
When the statue above it will loom unveil’d.
Lo, now the crowds that are under it sway;
The bugles are sounding; and look!—away
The veil is dropt!—and afar is hail’d,
With wild huzzas and hands that fly,
The form of the man that stands on high.
II.
How the crowd are cheering! but, ah, their cheer
Recalls a day
When few were here;
And the most of them daintily shrank away,
Afraid a foot or a frill to smear
In the mire of this place, while deep in the clay
The soil was dug for the monument here.
III.
And was there not, when his course began,
While clearing the ground for the life he had plann’d,
A time this crowd would have shrunk from the man
Whose image is now enthroned by the land?
Alas, how oft in youth’s chill morn
Their tears alone are the dews that adorn
The natures that wake
To the light of a day beginning to break!
And oft how long, ere the light will burst,
The mists of the valley surround them first!
And oh, how many and many a tomb
Of a dead hope, buried and left in gloom,
Must mark the path of the man whose need
Is taught through failure how to succeed!
And oft how long, ere he knows of this,
Will hard work doom
His heart that in sympathy seeks for bliss
To a life as lone as death in a tomb,
Where sweetness and light
Are all shut out,
Nor a flower nor a bird
Is heeded or heard,
Nor often, if ever, there comes a sight
Of a friend who cares what he cares about,
Or is willing to soil
A finger with even a touch of his toil!
For our race are too ready to turn with a sneer
From arms that are brawny, and hands that smear
While a man is dependent, in need of a friend,
The world is a snob, and shuns its own peer.
When a man is a master, his need at an end,
The world is a sycophant, cringing to cheer.
Cheer on, wise world, but, oh! forget not,
Whatever encouragement each man got
When in gloom and doubt his course began,
But little he heard from the lips of man.
IV.
But the monument knew a different day,
When masons with mortar and mallet wrought here
The firm and deep foundation to lay.
Still few would turn from the well-trod way
To climb the mounds of marble and clay
Which hid the work; or, if some drew near,
They only came with a stare of surprise,
Or a shrug or sigh for its form or size.
V.
That man, too, now on the monument resting,—
How long and hard life’s basis to lay,
Strove he, while about him was nothing suggesting
The meed that the present is proud to pay!
When all sailing is over, the shouts of a state
That hail a Columbus may name him great.
Before it is over, that isle of the west,
The goal of his quest,
Is merely, for most, the point of a jest.
Nor a few, the while he turns to his mission,
Will deem him moved by a mean ambition.
Ay, often indeed, the nobler the claims
Inspiring his aims,
The more earth deems
They are selfish schemes
Of a Joseph it hates for having strange dreams.
Alas, where hate
Is a normal state,
Who serves the world with a love that is great
Is rated a foe by those who refuse it,
Nor always a friend by those who use it;
For he, forsooth, he knew of their need
In the day they knew not how to succeed!—
And thus this man in the marble wrought on,
Life’s fruit fell off, and the fall frost froze,
And the winter of life came, weary and wan,
Ere words to welcome his worth arose.
Wise world, the one who is now your boast
Heard few of your cheers, when needing them most:
The pride of his youth in his life or its plan,
It came not then from the praise of man.
VI.
But the monument grew, anon to display
Above its foundation,
Those fair white sides that rose to their station
All cunningly wrought into tablet and column.
Then children, and others, as childlike as they,
Would delight in its beauty; but, doubtful and solemn,
The wise were all wary. “A man cannot rate
A work till complete,” said they, “so we must wait.”
VII.
And thus the man grew,
And thus did a few
Find, thoughtfully plann’d for the wants they divined,
His work that is now the pride of his kind.
Who prized it at first?—
Ah, those little verst
In the codes that are current turn first from them all
To the herald that comes to trump a new call.
Those nearest their youth
Live nearest the breasts that glow with the truth,
And welcome it gratefully warm from the heart.
Earth’s elders and sages,
Far off from the place where the springs all start,
Scarce ever can prize
A stream that supplies
A draft less far from its font than their age is.
No deeds can course from as grand a source
As the life of which they in their youth form’d a part.
Naught sparkles as bright
To them as the light
Of an old, cold, frozen, and crystallized art.
But, ah, if you ask them what was true
When the words or the ways of their art were new,
If you ask them what were the traits it would show
Ere the form now frozen no longer could flow,
Or how it differ’d in nature from those
That spring in the present, when first it rose,—
All this their critic cares not to know.
He is nothing if not the dog of his day,
Who barks or who licks
As his master, the world, may make him obey
By throwing him bones or swinging him kicks.
Pray, what can he know till all the world know it!
If currents in view
Are to crystallize too
Like things of the past, the winter will show it.
The future must rate
The fruit of the present: so shrewd men wait,
And but of the dead
Are their eulogies read.—
Good souls, they never will let one rest
Until he is borne to the land of the blest!
No heart is aglow
With the burning zeal of a holiest mission,
But makes them fearful of heat below,
And tremble in dread of a fiend’s apparition.
For Satan has toils that, no matter whether
Come evil or good, trap all men together.
Whenever one spies
Light coming, he cries,
“’Tis naught but a will-o-the-wisp to the wise.”
Half trust him, and half, not duped by his lies,
Begin to dispute them; and then, at the quarrel,
The seer of the light has thorns for his laurel.
Ay, rare, indeed, in that day is his fate,
If the eye of the prophet—so noble a trait—
Escape from censure and gibe and hate.
For an eye like his will a goal pursue
So far in advance of his time and its view,
That only the march of an age, forsooth,
Can o’ertake the vision he sees in his youth.
But, oh! in that age, when it comes, the earth
Will live in his light and know of his worth.
And many and many will be the men
Who move on then,
And about them find
The scenes that he in his day divined,
Who, sure of his presence, will know he is nigh,
And feel he is leading, and never can die.
This man of the monument lived like that.
Men cheer him now; but of old they sat
In judgment against him; while, far away
From the place where they had chosen to stay,
He push’d for the light; and grew old and hoar
Ere one whom he knew had begun to explore,
Or seek what he sought. Alone in the van,
He had fail’d of aid had he thought it in man.
VIII.
Yet now are justice and judgment one.
That statue glows in the gleam of the sun,
Amid drumming and trumpeting, chorus and song,
The praise of the speaker, the shout of the throng,
Throned white o’er the waving of plumes and of flags
That surge to its base as a sea to her crags.
Now cheer we the monument, capp’d and clear’d,
So cheer we the man for whom it is rear’d.
IX.
What? cheer we the man?
No doubt, in youth
There were times when the joy in his heart overran
At a smile from one who knew him in truth;
There were times, years later, when merely a tear
From a grateful eye
Would have seem’d more dear
Than all the glitter that gold could buy;
But, alas! in age, when character stands
As fix’d as yon monument, then it demands,
Ere aught can move it, far more, far more
Than the cheer or the sigh that had stirr’d it of yore.
Not oft, nor till ages of suns and storms
Have wrought with the verdure in earthly forms,
Are these turn’d into stone, no more to decay.
But often on earth
The owners of worth
That men image in marble grow stony, that way.
Ah, man, whom in hardship you might make a friend
And turn from—beware, beware in the end,
Lest he whom you harden grow hard unto you.
O world, when ready your hero to cheer,
How heeds he your welcome? say, what does he do?
His eye, does it see? his ear, does it hear?
His heart, does it throb? his pulse, does it thrill?
Or his touch, is it cold? his clasp, is it chill?—
O world, you have waited long; what have you done?
O man, you have wrought so long; what have you won?—
X.
That monument there,
So high, so fair,
That throne of light for the man who led,
Is only a tomb. They are cheering the dead.
XI.
And he himself—did he know it all?
Had he look’d, in his youth,
Past the shadows of form to the substance of truth?
Had he learn’d that all life turns to seasons, and shifts
From winter and spring into summer and fall?
Or divined that eternity, balancing gifts,
Grants honor like heaven, a state after strife,
And a glorified name to a sacrificed life?
Did he know that sighs, when yearning for love,
Best open the soul to breathe in from above
The air immortal, and make it worth while
That art should chisel in marble clear
The lines divine that temper a smile
Beyond the sway of a mortal’s cheer?—
Did he know it or not, perchance for his good
His work was lonely and misunderstood.
Perchance it was well, the best for the soul,
Its nature, its nurture, that aught to control
The aims inspiring his life or its plan
Had gain’d but little from earth or man.