JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 387 



" Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 

 Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; 

 Tlie late-sprung mine that underlaid 

 Thy sad concessions vainly made. 

 Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall 

 The star-flag of the Union fall, 

 And armed rebellion pressing on 

 The broken lines of Washington ! 

 No stronger voice than thine had then 

 Called out the utmost might of men 

 To make the Union's charter free, 

 And strengthen law by liberty. 



Wise men and strong we did not lack; 

 But still, witli memory turning back. 

 In the dark hours we thought of thee, 

 And thy lone grave beside the sea. 



But where thy native mountains bare 



Their foreheads to diviner air, 



Fit emblem of enduring fame, 



One lofty summit keeps thy name. 



For thee the cosmic forces did 



The rearing of that pyramid, 



The prescient ages shaping with 



Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. 



Sunrise and sunset lay thereon 



With hands of light their benison, 



The stars of midnight pause to set 



Their jewels in its coronet. 



And evermore that mountain mass 



Seems climbing from the shadowy pass 



To light, as if to manifest 



Thy nobler self, thy -life at best! " * 



Is it too mucli to see iu these lines, not an assent, but an 

 approach to that view of the Seventh of March Speech which 

 some, of the younger generations, are beginning to take ? that it 

 may have been not what men thought it at the time, — a blind 

 sacrifice of principle to self; but rather the most nobly patriotic 

 act of a nobly patriotic career, — a deliberate sacrifice of self to 

 the Union which, without such sacrifice, was not yet strong 

 enough to survive ? 



But this is not the place for political speculation. I have 

 tried to show AVhittier as he was, extenuating nothing nor set- 



* Poetical Works, Vol. IV. p. 63. 



