The Lost Occasion

Some die too late and some too soon,     At early morning, heat of noon,     Or the chill evening twilight. Thou,     Whom the rich heavens did so endow     With eyes of power and Jove's own brow,     With all the massive strength that fills     Thy home-horizon's granite hills,     With rarest gifts of heart and head     From manliest stock inherited,     New England's stateliest type of man,     In port and speech Olympian;     Whom no one met, at first, but took     A second awed and wondering look     (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece     On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece);     Whose words in simplest homespun clad,     The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had,     With power reserved at need to reach     The Roman forum's loftiest speech,     Sweet with persuasion, eloquent     In passion, cool in argument,     Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes     As fell the Norse god's hammer blows,     Crushing as if with Talus' flail     Through Error's logic-woven mail,     And failing only when they tried     The adamant of the righteous side,     Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved     Of old friends, by the new deceived,     Too soon for us, too soon for thee,     Beside thy lonely Northern sea,     Where long and low the marsh-lands spread,     Laid wearily down thy August head.     Thou shouldst have lived to feel below     Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow;     The 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.     How had that stern arbitrament     To thy gray age youth's vigor lent,     Shaming ambition's paltry prize     Before thy disillusioned eyes;     Breaking the spell about thee wound     Like the green withes that Samson bound;     Redeeming in one effort grand,     Thyself and thy imperilled land!     Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee,     O sleeper by the Northern sea,     The gates of opportunity!     God fills the gaps of human need,     Each crisis brings its word and deed.     Wise men and strong we did not lack;     But still, with memory turning back,     In the dark hours we thought of thee,     And thy lone grave beside the sea.     Above that grave the east winds blow,     And from the marsh-lands drifting slow     The sea-fog comes, with evermore     The wave-wash of a lonely shore,     And sea-bird's melancholy cry,     As Nature fain would typify     The sadness of a closing scene,     The loss of that which should have been.     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