You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,
Judging each step, as though the way were plain;
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph
Of chief's perplexity or people's pain.
Beside this corps, that beats for winding sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurril-jester, is there room for you?
Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen—
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.
My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue,
Noting how to occasion's height he rose,
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true,
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.
How humble yet how hopeful he could be;
How in good fortune and in ill the same;
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.
He went about his work—such work as few
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand—
As one who knows where there's a task to do
Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command:
Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,
That God makes instruments to work his will,
If but that will we can arrive to know,
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.
So he went forth to battle on the side
That he felt clear was liberty's and right's,
As in his peasant boyhood he had plied
His warfare with rude nature's thwarting mights—
The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,
The iron back, that turns the lumberer's axe;
The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil,
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,
The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear—
Such were the needs that helped his youth to train:
Rough culture—but such trees large fruit may bear
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.