FOURTH SERIES, i8S6. No. 7. (DID ^outl) 3lcaficti0f. Under the Old Elm. From the poetn read at Cambridge on the Hundredth Anniversary of VVash- ington's taking Command of the American Army, jd July, /77J. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ' I. Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done A power abides transfused from sire to son : The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, When, pointing down, his father whispers, "Here, Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely Great, Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere. Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate." Historic town, thou boldest sacred dust, Once known to men as pious, learned, just. And one memorial pile that dares to last; But Memory greets with reverential kiss No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this, Touched by that modest glory as it past. O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed These hundred years its monumental shade. 2. Of our swift passage through this scenery Of life and death, more durable than we. What landmark so congenial as a tree Repeating its green legend every spring, And, with a yearly ring, Recording the fair seasons as they flee. Type of our brief but still renewed mortality? We fall as leaves: the immortal trunk lemains, Builded with costly juice of hearts and brains Gone to the mould now, whither all that be Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still In human lives to come of good or ill, And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. y.n. I. Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names They should eternize, but the place Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace ' Reprinted for the Old South Leaflets by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mif- flin & Co. 2 . \ ,o, Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, That penetrates our lives and heightens them or shames. This insubstantial world and fleet Seems solid for a moment when we stand On dust ennobled by heroic feet Once mighty to sustain a tottering land. And mighty still such burthen to upbear. Nor doomed to tread the path of things that merely were ; Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot. Across the mists of Lethe's sleepy stream Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot. No more a pallid image and a dream, But as he dwelt with men decorously supreme. 2. Our grosser minds need this terrestrial hint To raise long-buried days from tombs of print : " Here stood he," softly we repeat, And lo, the statue shrined and still In that gray minster-front we call the Past, Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, Breathes living air and mocks at Death's deceit. It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last. Its features human with familiar light, A man, beyond the historian's art to kill. Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel-blight. 3- Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for naught Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought Into the seamless tapestry of thought. So charmed, with undeluded eye we see In history's fragmentary tale Bright clews of continuity. Learn that high natures over Time prevail, And feels ourselves a link in that entail That binds all ages past with all that are to be. in. I. Beneath our consecrated elm A century ago he stood. Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood Whose red surge sought, but could not overwhelm The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm : — From colleges, where now the gown To arms had yielded, from the town. Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone To bridle others' clamors and his own, Firmly erect, he towered above them all. The incarnate discipline that was to free With iron curb that armed democracy. 2. A motley rout was that which came to stare, In raiment tanned by years of sun and storm, Of every shape that was not uniform, Dotted with regimentals here and there; An army all of captains, used to pray And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair, Skilled to debate their orders, not obev ; Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note. In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods, Ready to settle Freewill by a vote. But largely liberal to its private moods; Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen, Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, Nor much fastidious as to how and when ; Yet seasoned stiff and fittest to create A thought-staid army or a lasting state : Haughty they said he was, at first; severe; But owned, as all men own, the steady hand Upon the bridle, patient to command. Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear. And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere. Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint. Musing beneath the legendary tree, The years between furl off : I seem to see The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through, Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue And weave prophetic aureoles round th-i head That shines our beacon now nor darkens with the dead. O, man of silent mood, A stranger among strangers then. How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, Familiar as the day in all the homes of men I The winged years, that winnow praise and blame, Blow many names out : they but fan to flame The self- renewing splendors of thy fame. IV. How many subtlest influences unite. With spiritual touch of joy or pain. Invisible as air and soft as light, To body forth that image of the brain We call our Country, visionary shape, Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than wine, Whose charm can none define. Nor any, though he flee it, can escape ! All party-colored threads the weaver Time Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime. All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears, Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree. The casual gleanings of unreckoned years. Take goddess-shape at last and there is She, Old at our birth, new as the springing hours. Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our powers. Consoler, kindier, peerless mid her peers, A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs, A life to give ours permanence, when we Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers, And all this glowing world goes with us on our biers. Nations are long results, by ruder ways Gathering the might that warrants length of days ; They may be pieced of half-reluctant shares Welded by hammer-strokes of broad-brained kings, Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs Of wise traditions widening cautious rings ; At best they are computable things, A strength behind us making us feel bold In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; Whose force by figures may be summed and told, So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, And we but drops that bear compulsory part In tfie dumb throb of a mechanic heart ; But Country is a shape of each man's mind Sacred from definition, unconfined By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries grind; An inward vision, yet an outward birth Of sweet familiar heaven and earth ; A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind Of wings within our embryo being's shell That wait but her completer spell To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. You, who hold dear this self-conceived ideal, Whose faith and works alone can make it real, Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. When all have done their utmost, surely he Hath given the best who gives a character Erect and constant, which nor any shock Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir From its deep bases in the living rock Of ancient manhood's sweet security : And this he gave, serenely far from pride As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied. Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. No bond of men as common pride so strong, In names time-filtered for the lips of song. Still operant, with the primal Forces bound Whose currents, on their spiritual round. Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid: These are their arsenals, these the exhaustless mines That give a constant heart in great designs ; These are the stuff whereof such dreams are made As make heroic men : thus surely he Still holds in place the massy blocks he laid 'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly The self-control that makes and keeps a people free. O, for a drop of that Cornelian ink Which gave Agricola dateless length of days, To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink, With him so statue-like in sad reserve. So ditfident to claim, so forward to deserve ! Nor need I shun due influence of his fame Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow. That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. What figure more immovably august Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, sure. That mind serene, impenetrably just. Modelled on classic lines so simple they endure ? That soul so softly radiant and so white The track it left seems less of fire than light, Cold but to such as love distemperature? And if pure light, as some deem, be the force That drives rejoicing planets on their course. Why for his power benign seek an impurer source ? His was the true enthusiasm that burns long. Domestically bright. Fed from itself and shy of human sight. The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong. And not the short-lived fuel of a song. Passionless, say you .'' What is passion for But to sublime our natures and control To front heroic toils with late return, Or none, or such as shames the conqueror? That fire was fed with substance of the soul And not with holiday stubble, that could burn, Unpraised of men who after bonfires run. Through seven slow years of unadvancing war, Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, With breath of popular applause or blame. Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same, Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame. Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; High-poised example of great duties done Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn As life's indifferent gifts to all men born ; Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed Save by the men his nobler temper shamed ; Never seduced through show of present good By other than unsetting lights to steer New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear; Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still In swerveless poise the w ave-beat helm of will ; Not honored then or now because he wooed The popular voice, but that he still withstood; Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one Who was all this and ours, and all men's, — Washington. Minds strong by fits, irregularly great. That flash and darken like revolving lights. Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait On the long curve of patient days and nights Rounding a whole life to the circle fair Of orbed fulfilment ; and this balanced soul, So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare Of draperies theatric, standing there In perfect symmetry of self-control, Seems not so great at first, but greater grows Still as we look, and by experience learn How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern The discipline that wrought through lifelong throes That energetic passion of repose. A nature too decorous and severe, Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys, For ardent girls and boys Who find no genius in a mind so clear That its grave depths seem obvious and near, Nor a soul great that made so little noise. They feel no force in that calm-cadenced phrase. The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind. That seems to pace the minuet's courtly maze And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days. His firm-based brain, to self so little kind That no tumultuary blood could blind. Formed to control men, not amaze. Looms not like those that borrow height of haze : It was a world of statelier movement then Than this we fret in, he a denizen Of that ideal Rome that made a man for men. VI. The longer on this earth we live And weigh the various qualities of men. Seeing how most are fugitive. Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then, Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty Of plain devotedness to duty, Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, But finding amplest recompense For life's ungarlanded expense In work done squarely and unwasted days. For this we honor him, that he could know How sweet the service and how free Of her, God's eldest daughter here below. And choose in meanest raiment which was she. 2. Placid completeness, life without a fall From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall, Surely if any fame can bear the touch. His will say " Here ! " at the last trumpet's call, The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. VII. I. Never to see a nation born Hath been given to mortal man. Unless to those who, on that summer morn, Gazed silent when the great Virginian Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash Shot union through the incoherent clash Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them Around a single will's unpliant stem. And making purpose of emotion rash. Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb, Nebulous at first but hardening to a star. Through mutual share of sunburst and of gloom, The common faith that made us what we are. 2. That lifted blade transformed our jangling clans. Till then provincial, to Americans, And made a unity of wildering plans ; Here was the doom fixed ; here is marked the date When this New World awoke to man's estate. Burnt its last ship and ceased to look behind : Nor thoughtless was the choice; no love or hate Could from its poise move that deliberate mind, Weighing between too early and too late Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate: His was the impartial vision of the great Who see not as they wish, but as they find. He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less The incomputable perils of success; The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind ; The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets blind; The waste of war, the ignominy of peace ; On either hand a sullen rear of woes, ^Vhose garnered lightnings none could guess. Piling its thunder-heads and muttering " Cease I " Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation rose. 3- A noble choice and of immortal seed ! Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance Or easy were as in a boy's romance; The man's whole life preludes the single deed That shall decide if his inheritance Be with the sifted few of matchless breed. Our race's sap and sustenance. Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed. Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus or so. What matters it .? The Fates with mocking face Look on inexorable, nor seem to know Where the lot lurks that gives life's foremost place. Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, And but two ways are offered to our will. Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race. He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed, Nor ever faltered 'neath the load Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the most, But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road. Strong to the end, above complaint or boast : The popular tempest on his rock-mailed coast Wasted its wind-borne spray, The noisy marvel of a day; His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. Washington's Resignation. His Address to Congress at Annapolis, December 2j, Jy8j. The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to congress, and of presenting myself before them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country. Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a re- spectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence ; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the union, and the patronage of heaven. The successful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine expectations ; and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest. While I repeat my obligations to the army in general, I should do injus- tice to my own feelings not to acknowledge in this place the peculiar services and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who have been attached to my per- son during the war. It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to compose my family should have been more fortunate. Pertnit me, sir, to recommend in particular those who have continued in the service to the pres- ent moment, as worthy of the favourable notice and patronage of congress. I consider it as an indispensible duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendance of them to his holy keeping. Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. The completest and most interesting Life of Washington is that by Irving. The admirable Life by Chief-Justice Marshall will alwavs have a special interest as the work of a great man who knew Washington well. Sparks prefixed a biography to his edition of Wasliingion's Writings, and this has been published separately and is one of the best. A good briefer biography is that by Everett ; and the addresses and essays on Washington by Kverett, Webster, Winthrop, Whipjile, and Theodore Parker are important. The volume of " Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington," by George Washington Parke Custis, Mrs. Washington's grandson and the boy of the Mt. Vernon household, gives vivid and valuable impressions of Washington's private life and character. See also the article by Parton, "The True and Traditional Washington," in the Magazine of American History, 1879. Headley's " Washington and his Generals " contains brief biographies of Greene, Gates, Putnam, Wayne, Schuyler, and all of the leading generals of the Revolution, and there exist important separate lives of many of these. The chapters on the Army of the Revolution and the Campaigns of the Revolution, in Greene's " Historical View of the American Revo- lution," throw much light on the military conduct of the war. The younger readers hardly need to be reminded of Coffin's " Boys of '76 ; " and none must forget liow often the poets and the story-tellers liave devoted themselves to Revolutionary themes. For the fullest information concerning all books relating to the Revolution, the student is referred to Winsor's "Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution. " ^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 609 277 5