The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! Walk the deck my Captain lies, WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN1 CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1834-) has acquired national celebrity as an orator and after-dinner speaker. The selection given here is part of an address, "The Mutations of Time,' delivered before the Lotos Club, New York City, on February 22, 1896. In that year, for the first time, Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays were celebrated as legal holidays. NEVER Since the creation of man were two human beings so unlike, so nearly extremes or opposed to each other, as Washington and Lincoln. The one an aristocrat by birth, by breeding and association; the other in every sense and by every surrounding a democrat. As the richest man in America, a large slaveholder, the possessor of an enormous landed estate and the leader and representative of the property and the culture and the colleges of the Colonial period, Washington stood for the conservation and preservation of law and order. He could be a revolutionist and pledge his life and fortune and honor 1 From The Mutations of Time. Parke, Austin and Lipscomb. Used by permission. for the principles which in his judgment safeguarded the rights and liberties of his country. But in the construction of the Republic and in the formation of its institutions, and in the critical period of experiment until they could get in working order, he gave to them and implanted in them conservative elements which are found in no other system of government. And yet, millionaire, slaveholder, and aristocrat in its best sense, that he was, all his life; so at any time he would have died for the immortal principle put by the Puritans in their charter adopted in the cabin of the "Mayflower" and reënacted in the Declaration of Independence, of the equality of all men before the law, and of equal opportunity for all to rise. Lincoln, on the other hand, was born in a cabin among that class known as "poor whites" in slaveholding times, who held and could hold no position, and whose condition was so hopeless as to paralyze ambition and effort. His situation, so far as his surroundings were concerned, had considerable mental but little moral improvement by the removal to Indiana, and subsequently to Illinois. Anywhere in the Old World a man born amid such an environment and teachings, and possessed of unconquerable energy and ambition and the greatest powers of eloquence and constructive statesmanship, would have been a socialist and the leader of a social revolt. He might have been an anarchist. His one ambition would have been to break the crust above him and shatter it to pieces. He would see otherwise no opportunity for himself and his fellows in social or political or professional life. But Lincoln attained from the log cabin of the poor white in the wilderness the same position which George Washington reached from his palatial mansion and baronial estate on the Potomac. He made the same fight, unselfishly, patriotically, and grandly for the preservation of the Republic that Washington had made for its creation and foundation. Widely as they are separated, these two heroes of the two great crises of our national life stand together in representing solvent powers, inspiring processes, and the hopeful opportunities of American liberty. The one coming from the top, and the other from the bottom, to the Presidency of the United States, the leadership of the people, the building up of government and the reconstruction of States, they superbly illustrate the fact that under our institutions there is neither place nor time for the socialist or the anarchist, but there is a place and always a time, notwithstanding the discouragements of origin or of youth, for grit, pluck, ambition, honesty, and brains. From "ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION”1 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL The "Harvard Commemoration Ode" is ranked by critics as the greatest single poem yet written in America. It was read on July 21, 1865, at the service held in commemoration of Harvard men who lost their lives in the Civil War. The day, the place, and the memories of his own grief as well as that of his Alma Mater combined to make the occasion one that would call forth the highest gifts of the poet. The effect of Lowell's reading of the "Ode" upon the audience is described as being overpowering. His face, always expressive, seemed to be so transfigured and illumined by an inward light that people were unable to look away from it while they listened breathlessly to the beautiful stanzas. The passage about Lincoln was not in the "Ode" as originally recited, but was added immediately afterwards. SUCH was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: And cannot make a man 1 From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell. Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company. |