Lonesome Place Against the Sky
For the two hundredth birthday of America’s greatest president, this poem from Edwin Markham:
WHEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need.
She took the tried clay of the common road—
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth,
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears;
Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face.
Here was a man to hold against the world,
A man to match the mountains and the sea.
The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;
The smack and tang of elemental things:
The rectitude and patience of the cliff;
The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves;
The friendly welcome of the wayside well;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
The secrecy of streams that make their way
Beneath the mountain to the rifted rock;
The tolerance and equity of light
That gives as freely to the shrinking flower
As to the great oak flaring to the wind—
To the grave’s low hill as to the Matterhorn
That shoulders out the sky.
Sprung from the West,
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind,
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul.
Up from log cabin to the Capitol,
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve:—
To send the keen axe to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way for the feet of God.
And evermore he burned to do his deed
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king:
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow;
The conscience of him testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.
So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the judgment thunders split the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place—
Held the long purpose like a growing tree—
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Mike, this is amazing! I love this poem! This brought tears. I am moved by his strong description of Lincoln but also with the thought about how each of us was put together…put together to fight our particular battles…love it.
Twice in funerals I’ve used these lines to describe men whose deaths left lonesome places in my life:
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Those last 4 lines were used at the memorial for the late Dr. Thomas A. Langford, longtime educator at Texas Tech and one of the godliest men I have ever known.
Very stirring, and this from a guy who doesn’t give poetry the respect it deserves.
I enjoyed reading Team of Rivals a few years ago. Such a humble leader.
“For the two hundredth birthday of America’s greatest president,”
It’s Grover Cleveland’s birthday?
Wait a minute! I thought Barack Obama was America’s Greatest President!?!
Have I been misled?
he he he
JD: yes.
Helpfully,
qb
JD & qb – you two are having entirely too much fun.
Surely you don’t mean Abraham Lincoln?
The guy who thought it necessary to “end slavery” by fighting a horribly bloody war, when all other western countries ended slavery non violently? Mightn’t it be that ole Abe’s motivations weren’t so much ending slavery as they were consolidating Federal powers?
We like to rag on Bush (I with the best of them) but if you think Bush was a tyrant, who committed war crimes, you should take a long hard look at ole “honest” abe,
Sherman’s march, for example, where soldiers were instructed to ravage civilian homes, kill all livestock, and burn burn burn… and Lincoln the greatest president ever, signed off on these measures.
He denied constitutional rights, namely habeas corpus, to citizens of the United States…
He continued to escalate the war when it was unnecessary, by conscripting people (common practice was for the rich who were drafted to pay a poor person to serve for them). Lincoln even brough foreign mercenaries into the mix, and new immigrants were often forced to serve in this war.
Raising troops without the approval of Congress (as is mandated in the constitution)
Denying northern states their rights as governments in a Republic
and the list goes on and on.
I just get tired of the Lincoln worship by those who think Bush was such a terrible person. If nothing else, the calculated total war against civilians makes it, in my opinion, absolutely unacceptable to revere this president as a good guy. Good guys don’t intentionally attack civilians. I’m quite sure in our time, we tend to call those people despots, tyrants, and terrorists.
theo-econ-wizard
What a shame it is that you weren’t around to end slavery peacefully!
One Lincoln quote i heard yesterday was “Can you see the irony in the fact that I, who couldn’t cut the head off a chicken, am thrust into the middle of this blood-saoked conflict.” (From memory, probably isn’t verbatim, but it’s close)
I, for one, think Lincoln is by far the greatest president ever, who tried everything to maintain the Union before going to war. He refused to send reinforcements to Ft. Sumter even after it was being threatened, since he didn’t want any bellicose actions to signal the South that war was necessary.
“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” … My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that…. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” …Lincoln, just before issuing the emancipation proclamation.
The first proclamation didn’t apply to the slave states which were loyal to the union (KY, MO, and two others, not sure which right now) because he didn’t want them to secede. His wishes to free the slaves were motivated to a large extent from the desire to weaken the secessionist South, but his aim was eventually to see all freed, which did happen. He did look at colonizing someplace in Central America or Puerto Rico as a possible place for slaves to relocate, saying he wasn’t sure the two races could co-exist. Whether this was a personal belief or from pragmatism, I’m not sure. He was a mix, for sure, and not to be worshipped, but to say that he fought a horribly bloody war waged on civilians because he wanted it that way is to miss by a long way any resemblance to the man or his motives.
However, I sure do wish you could have been there, and saved us all that mess. What a waste.
I hate to see theo-econ-wizard being a lone voice on this subject, so let me say that I also am of the opinion that Lincoln was a tyrant and a war criminal. The Real Lincoln by Thomas Dilorezo, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War are good sources of information to start with, but many other books and articles also support this opinion.