University of Virginia Library

VIII
PHAROS

One such there was, that brother elder-born
And loftiest,—from your household torn
In the rathe spring-time, ere
His steps could seek their olden pathways here.
Mourn!
Mourn, for your Mother mourns, of him bereft,—
Her strong one! he is fallen:
But has left
His works your heritage and guide,
Through East and West his stalwart fame divide.
Mourn, for the liberal youth,
The undaunted spirit whose quintessence rare,
Fanned by the Norseland air,
Saw flaming in its own white heat the truth
That Man, whate'er his ancestry,
Tanned by what sun or exiled from what shore,
Hears in his soul the high command,—Be Free!
For him who, at the parting of the ways,
Disdained the flowery path, and gave
His succor to the hunted Afric slave,
Whose cause he chose nor feared the world's dispraise;
Yet found anon the right become the might,
And, in the long revenge of time,
Lived to renown and hoary years sublime.
Ye know him now, your beacon-light!
Ay, he was fronted like a tower,—
In thought large-moulded, as of frame;
He that, in the supreme hour,
Sat brooding at the river-heads of power
With sovereign strength for every need that came!
Not for that blameless one the place
That opens wide to men of lesser race;—
Even as of old the votes are given,
And Aristides is from Athens driven;
But for our statesmen, in his grander trust
No less the undefiled, The Just,—
With poesy and learning lightly worn,
And knees that bent to Heaven night and morn,—
For him that sacred, unimpassioned seat,
Where right and wrong for stainless judgment meet
Above the greed, the strife, the party call.—
Henceforth let Chase's robes on no base shoulders fall!