"By the name that you inherit,
By the sufferings you recall,
Cherish the fraternal spirit;
Love your country first of all!
Listen not to idle questions
If its bands maybe untied;
Doubt the patriot whose suggestions
Strive a nation to divide!"
Father! We, whose ears have tingled
With the discord-notes of shame,—
We, whose sires their blood have mingled
In the battle's thunder-flame,—
Gathering, while this holy morning
Lights the land from sea to sea,
Hear thy counsel, heed thy warning;
Trust us, while we honor thee!
BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEBSTER
JANUARY 18, 1856
WHEN life hath run its largest round
Of toil and triumph, joy and woe,
How brief a storied page is found
To compass all its outward show!
The world-tried sailor tires and droops;
His flag is rent, his keel forgot;
His farthest voyages seem but loops
That float from life's entangled knot.
But when within the narrow space
Some larger soul hath lived and wrought,
Whose sight was open to embrace
The boundless realms of deed and thought,—
When, stricken by the freezing blast,
A nation's living pillars fall,
How rich the storied page, how vast,
A word, a whisper, can recall!
No medal lifts its fretted face,
Nor speaking marble cheats your eye,
Yet, while these pictured lines I trace,
A living image passes by:
A roof beneath the mountain pines;
The cloisters of a hill-girt plain;
The front of life's embattled lines;
A mound beside the heaving main.