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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420638" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Sumner</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Mother State! the winds of March<br>Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God,<br>Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch<br>Of sky, thy mourning children trod.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now, with all thy woods in leaf,<br>Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead<br>Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief,<br>A Rachel yet uncomforted!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And once again the organ swells,<br>Once more the flag is half-way hung,<br>And yet again the mournful bells<br>In all thy steeple-towers are rung.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I, obedient to thy will,<br>Have come a simple wreath to lay,<br>Superfluous, on a grave that still<br>Is sweet with all the flowers of May.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I take, with awe, the task assigned;<br>It may be that my friend might miss,<br>In his new sphere of heart and mind,<br>Some token from my band in this.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By many a tender memory moved,<br>Along the past my thought I send;<br>The record of the cause he loved<br>Is the best record of its friend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No trumpet sounded in his ear,<br>He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame,<br>But never yet to Hebrew seer<br>A clearer voice of duty came.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">God said: 'Break thou these yokes; undo<br>These heavy burdens. I ordain<br>A work to last thy whole life through,<br>A ministry of strife and pain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Forego thy dreams of lettered ease,<br>Put thou the scholar's promise by,<br>The rights of man are more than these.'<br>He heard, and answered: 'Here am I!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He set his face against the blast,<br>His feet against the flinty shard,<br>Till the hard service grew, at last,<br>Its own exceeding great reward.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lifted like Saul's above the crowd,<br>Upon his kingly forehead fell<br>The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud,<br>Launched at the truth he urged so well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! never yet, at rack or stake,<br>Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain,<br>Than his, who suffered for her sake<br>The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The fixed star of his faith, through all<br>Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same;<br>As through a night of storm, some tall,<br>Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beyond the dust and smoke he saw<br>The sheaves of Freedom's large increase,<br>The holy fanes of equal law,<br>The New Jerusalem of peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The weak might fear, the worldling mock,<br>The faint and blind of heart regret;<br>All knew at last th' eternal rock<br>On which his forward feet were set.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The subtlest scheme of compromise<br>Was folly to his purpose bold;<br>The strongest mesh of party lies<br>Weak to the simplest truth he told.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One language held his heart and lip,<br>Straight onward to his goal he trod,<br>And proved the highest statesmanship<br>Obedience to the voice of God.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No wail was in his voice,--none heard,<br>When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew,<br>The weakness of a doubtful word;<br>His duty, and the end, he knew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The first to smite, the first to spare;<br>When once the hostile ensigns fell,<br>He stretched out hands of generous care<br>To lift the foe he fought so well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For there was nothing base or small<br>Or craven in his soul's broad plan;<br>Forgiving all things personal,<br>He hated only wrong to man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The old traditions of his State,<br>The memories of her great and good,<br>Took from his life a fresher date,<br>And in himself embodied stood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How felt the greed of gold and place,<br>The venal crew that schemed and planned,<br>The fine scorn of that haughty face,<br>The spurning of that bribeless hand!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If than Rome's tribunes statelier<br>He wore his senatorial robe,<br>His lofty port was all for her,<br>The one dear spot on all the globe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If to the master's plea he gave<br>The vast contempt his manhood felt,<br>He saw a brother in the slave,--<br>With man as equal man he dealt.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Proud was he? If his presence kept<br>Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod,<br>As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped<br>The hero and the demigod,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">None failed, at least, to reach his ear,<br>Nor want nor woe appealed in vain;<br>The homesick soldier knew his cheer,<br>And blessed him from his ward of pain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Safely his dearest friends may own<br>The slight defects he never hid,<br>The surface-blemish in the stone<br>Of the tall, stately pyramid.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Suffice it that he never brought<br>His conscience to the public mart;<br>But lived himself the truth he taught,<br>White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What if he felt the natural pride<br>Of power in noble use, too true<br>With thin humilities to hide<br>The work he did, the lore he knew?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Was he not just? Was any wronged<br>By that assured self-estimate?<br>He took but what to him belonged,<br>Unenvious of another's state.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well might he heed the words he spake,<br>And scan with care the written page<br>Through which he still shall warm and wake<br>The hearts of men from age to age.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! who shall blame him now because<br>He solaced thus his hours of pain!<br>Should not the o'erworn thresher pause,<br>And hold to light his golden grain?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No sense of humor dropped its oil<br>On the hard ways his purpose went;<br>Small play of fancy lightened toil;<br>He spake alone the thing he meant.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He loved his books, the Art that hints<br>A beauty veiled behind its own,<br>The graver's line, the pencil's tints,<br>The chisel's shape evoked from stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He cherished, void of selfish ends,<br>The social courtesies that bless<br>And sweeten life, and loved his friends<br>With most unworldly tenderness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But still his tired eyes rarely learned<br>The glad relief by Nature brought;<br>Her mountain ranges never turned<br>His current of persistent thought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The sea rolled chorus to his speech<br>Three-banked like Latium's' tall trireme,<br>With laboring oars; the grove and beach<br>Were Forum and the Academe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The sensuous joy from all things fair<br>His strenuous bent of soul repressed,<br>And left from youth to silvered hair<br>Few hours for pleasure, none for rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For all his life was poor without,<br>O Nature, make the last amends<br>Train all thy flowers his grave about,<br>And make thy singing-birds his friends!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Revive again, thou summer rain,<br>The broken turf upon his bed<br>Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest strain<br>Of low, sweet music overhead!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With calm and beauty symbolize<br>The peace which follows long annoy,<br>And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes,<br>Some hint of his diviner joy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For safe with right and truth he is,<br>As God lives he must live alway;<br>There is no end for souls like his,<br>No night for children of the day!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor cant nor poor solicitudes<br>Made weak his life's great argument;<br>Small leisure his for frames and moods<br>Who followed Duty where she went.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The broad, fair fields of God he saw<br>Beyond the bigot's narrow bound;<br>The truths he moulded into law<br>In Christ's beatitudes he found.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His state-craft was the Golden Rule,<br>His right of vote a sacred trust;<br>Clear, over threat and ridicule,<br>All heard his challenge: 'Is it just?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when the hour supreme had come,<br>Not for himself a thought he gave;<br>In that last pang of martyrdom,<br>His care was for the half-freed slave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not vainly dusky hands upbore,<br>In prayer, the passing soul to heaven<br>Whose mercy to His suffering poor<br>Was service to the Master given.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Long shall the good State's annals tell,<br>Her children's children long be taught,<br>How, praised or blamed, he guarded well<br>The trust he neither shunned nor sought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If for one moment turned thy face,<br>O Mother, from thy son, not long<br>He waited calmly in his place<br>The sure remorse which follows wrong.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forgiven be the State he loved<br>The one brief lapse, the single blot;<br>Forgotten be the stain removed,<br>Her righted record shows it not!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The lifted sword above her shield<br>With jealous care shall guard his fame;<br>The pine-tree on her ancient field<br>To all the winds shall speak his name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The marble image of her son<br>Her loving hands shall yearly crown,<br>And from her pictured Pantheon<br>His grand, majestic face look down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O State so passing rich before,<br>Who now shall doubt thy highest claim?<br>The world that counts thy jewels o'er<br>Shall longest pause at Sumner's name!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420638" data-title="Sumner de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="O Mother State! the winds of March
Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God,
Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
Of sky, thy mourning children trod.

And now, with all thy woods in leaf,
Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead
Thou sittest, in thy robes..."></div>
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