NO GLITTERING chaplet brought from other lands!
As in his life, this man, in death, is ours;
His own loved prairies o'er his "gaunt, gnarled hands"
Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers!
What need hath he now of a tardy crown,
His name from mocking jest and sneer to save?
When every ploughman turns his furrow down
As soft as though it fell upon his grave.
He was a man whose like the world again
Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise;
The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign
Are battles, not the pomps of gala days!
The grandest leader of the grandest war
That ever time in history gave a place;
What were the tinsel flattery of a star
To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace!
'Tis to th' man, and th' man's honest worth,
The nation's loyalty in tears upsprings;
Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth
High o'er the silken broideries of kings.
The mechanism of external forms—
The shrifts that courtiers put their bodies through,
Were alien ways to him—his brawny arms
Had other work than posturing to do!
Born of the people, well he knew to grasp
The wants and wishes of the weak and small;
Therefore we hold him with no shadowy clasp—
Therefore his name is household to us all.
Therefore we love him with a love apart
From any fawning love of pedigree—
His was the royal soul and mind and heart—
Not the poor outward shows of royalty.
Forgive us then, O friends, if we are slow
To meet your recognition of his worth—
We're jealous of the very tears that flow
From eyes that never loved a humble hearth.
Wilbur D. Nesbit
YOUR Flag and my Flag,
And how it flies today
In your land and my land
And half the world away!
Rose-red and blood-red
The stripes forever gleam;
Snow-white and soul-white—
The good forefather's dream;
Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright—
The gloried guidon of the day; a shelter through the night.
Your Flag and my Flag!
And, oh, how much it holds—
Your land and my land—
Secure within its folds!
Your heart and my heart
Beat quicker at the sight;
Sun-kissed and wind-tossed,
Red and blue and white.
The one Flag—the great Flag—the Flag for me and you—
Glorified all else beside—the red and white and blue!
Your Flag and my Flag!
To every star and stripe
The drums beat as hearts beat
And fifers shrilly pipe!
Your Flag and my Flag—
A blessing in the sky;
Your hope and my hope—
It never hid a lie!
Home land and far land and half the world around,
Old Glory hears our glad salute and ripples to the sound!
Charles G. Halpin
HE FILLED the nation's eye and heart,
An honored, loved, familiar name,
So much a brother that his fame
Seemed of our lives a common part.
His towering figure, sharp and spare,
Was with such nervous tension strung,
As if on each strained sinew swung
The burden of a people's care.
He was his country's, not his own;
He had no wish but for her weal;
Not for himself could think or feel,
But as a laborer for her throne.
O, loved and lost! thy patient toil
Had robed our cause in Victory's light;
Our country stood redeemed and bright,
With not a slave on all her soil.
A martyr to the cause of man,
His blood is freedom's eucharist,
And in the world's great hero list,
His name shall lead the van.