Exalted chief, in thy superior mind
What vast resource, what various talents joined!
Tempered with social virtue's milder rays,
There patriot worth diffused a purer blaze;
Formed to command respect, esteem, inspire,
Midst statesmen grave, or midst the social choir,
With equal skill the sword or pen to wield,
In council great, unequaled in the field,
Mid glittering courts or rural walks to please,
Polite with grandeur, dignified with ease;
Before the splendors of thy high renown
How fade the glow-worn lusters of a crown;
How sink diminished in that radiance lost
The glare of conquest, and of power the boast.
Let Greece her Alexander's deeds proclaim;
Or Cæsar's triumphs gild the Roman name;
Stripped of the dazzling glare around them cast,
Shrinks at their crimes humanity aghast;
With equal claim to honor's glorious meed.
See Attila his course of havoc lead!
O'er Asia's realms, in one vast ruin hurled.
See furious Zingis' bloody flag unfurled.
On base far different from the conqueror's claim
Rests the unsullied column of thy fame;
His on the woes of millions proudly based,
With blood cemented and with tears defaced;
Thine on a nation's welfare fixed sublime,
By freedom strengthened and revered by time.
He, as the Comet, whose portentous light
Spreads baleful splendor o'er the glooms of night,
With chill amazement fills the startled breast.
While storms and earthquakes dire its course attest,
And nature trembles, lest, in chaos hurled,
Should sink the tottering fabric of the world.
Thou, like the Sun, whose kind propitious ray
Opes the glad morn and lights the fields of day,
Dispels the wintry storm, the chilling rain,
With rich abundance clothes the smiling plain,
Gives all creation to rejoice around,
And life and light extends o'er nature's utmost bound.
Though shone thy life a model bright of praise,
Not less the example bright thy death portrays,
When, plunged in deepest we, around thy bed,
Each eye was fixed, despairing sunk each head,
While nature struggled with severest pain,
And scarce could life's last lingering powers retain:
In that dread moment, awfully serene,
No trace of suffering marked thy placid mien,
No groan, no murmuring plaint, escaped thy tongue,
No lowering shadows on thy brow were hung;
But calm in Christian hope, undamped with fear,
Thou sawest the high reward of virtue near,
On that bright meed in sweetest trust reposed,
As thy firm hand thine eyes expiring closed,
Pleased, to the will of heaven resigned thy breath,
And smiled as nature's struggles closed in death.
THE MAJESTIC EMINENCE OF WASHINGTON[ToC]
BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW
In an Address, February 22, 1888
"Time's noblest offspring is the last."
As the human race has moved along down the centuries, the vigorous and ambitious, the dissenters from blind obedience and the original thinkers, the colonists and state builders, have broken camp with the morning, and followed the sun till the close of day. They have left behind narrow and degrading laws, traditions, and castes. Their triumphant success is pushing behind every bayonet carried at the order of Kaiser or Czar; men, who, in doing their own thinking, will one day decide for themselves the problems of peace and war.
The scenes of the fifth act of the grand drama are changing, but all attention remains riveted upon one majestic figure. He stands the noblest leader who ever was intrusted with his country's life. His patience under provocation, his calmness in danger, and lofty courage when all others despaired, his prudent delays when delay was best, and his quick and resistless blows when action was possible, his magnanimity to defamers and generosity to his foes, his ambition for his country and unselfishness for himself, his sole desire of freedom and independence for America, and his only wish to return after victory to private life, have all combined to make him, by the unanimous judgment of the world, the foremost figure of history.