Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VOICE OF WEBSTER, by ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VOICE OF WEBSTER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Silence was envious of the only voice
Last Line: Long shall its echoes rouse the patriot's heart.
Subject(s): American Civil War; Democracy; United States - Congress - Senate; United States - History; United States - Reconstruction (1865-1877); Webster, Daniel (1782-1852)


SILENCE was envious of the only voice
That mightier seemed that she. So, cloaked as Death,
With potion borrowed from Oblivion,
Yet with slow step and tear-averted look,
She sealed his lips, closed his extinguished eyes,
And, veiling him with darkness, deemed him dead.
But no! -- There's something vital in the great
That blunts the edge of Death, and sages say
You should stab deep if you would kill a king.
In vain! The conqueror's conqueror he remains,
Surviving his survivors. And as when,
The prophet gone, his least disciple stands
Newly invested with a twilight awe,
So linger men beside his listeners
While they recount that miracle of speech
And the hushed wonder over which it fell.

What do they tell us of that storied voice,
Breathing an upper air, wherein he dwelt
Mid shifting clouds a mountain of resolve,
And falling like Sierra's April flood
That pours in ponderous cadence from the cliff,
Waking Yosemite from its sleep of snow,
And less by warmth than by its massive power
Thawing a thousand torrents into one?
Such was his speech, and, were his fame to die,
Such for its requiem alone were fit:
Some kindred voice of Nature, as the Sea
When autumn tides redouble their lament
On Marshfield shore; some elemental force
Kindred to Nature in the mind of man --
A far-felt, rhythmic, and resounding wave
Of Homer, or a freedom-breathing wind
Sweeping the height of Milton's loftiest mood.
Most fit of all, could his own words pronounce
His eulogy, eclipsing old with new,
As though a dying star should burst in light.

And yet he spoke not only with his voice.
His full brow, buttressing a dome of thought,
Moved the imagination like the rise
Of some vast temple covering nothing mean.
His eyes were sibyls' caves, wherein the wise
Read sibyls' secrets; and the iron clasp
Of those broad lips, serene or saturnine,
Made proclamation of majestic will.
His glance could silence like a frowning Fate.
His mighty frame was refuge, while his mien
Did make dispute of stature with the gods.

See, in the Senate, how his presence towers
Above the tallest, who but seem as marks
To guide the unwonted gaze to where he stands,
First of his peers - a lordly company.
Each State still gave the others of its best -
Our second race of giants, now, alas!
Buried beneath the lava-beds of war.
Not yet had weaklings trod the purchased path
To a feigned honor in the curule chair,
Holding a world's contempt of them for fame -
As one should take the leaves stripped from his scourge
To wreathe himself a counterfeit of bay.
An age is merely Man, and, thus compact,
Must grimly expiate paternal sins;
That age's shame stands naked to the world,
And no man dares to hide it; yet one boast
Palsies the pointing finger of to-day:
'Twas slave, not master, that we bought and sold.

Oh, for fit word of scorn to execrate
Our brood new-born of Greed and Liberty!
Not the blind mass of stumbling ignorance
(For the dread portent of a blackening cloud
May by bold shafts of sunlight be dispersed),
But those who lead them to the nation's hurt -
These our kind neighbors, semblances of men,
The Church's bulwark, the beloved of homes,
Locked fast in friendship's ever-loyal pledge,
Yet to whom treason is their daily breath.
Not Lucifer, on each conspiring wind
Rallying his abject crew to new assaults;
Not all the recreant names that spawning War
Has cursed with immortality, can match
The craft of their betrayals. All is sold:
Law, justice, mercy, and the future's hope -
This land that buoys the fainting fears of Man.
Yet to praise Webster one of these has dared! -
Webster, undaunted by the hour's reproof,
Webster, untempted by the hour's applause,
Who scorned to win by any art but truth!
Who, had he heard the impious flattery,
Across the Senate would have launched his wrath,
Like Cicero on cowering Catiline,
In one white passion that forevermore
Had saved to Infamy an empty name
That now he spurns in silence from his grave.

Yet had he frailities, which let those recount
Who have not seen the nigh-o'erwhelmed state
Rescued from peril by some roisterer's skill
While all the petted virtues of the home
Stood pale and helpless. Time's a mountain-wall
That gives a fainter echo to one's best,
But unto weak or wanting, mere disdain.
He had his passions - all but one are dead:
That was his country. Never lover loved,
Soldier defended, poet praised, as he,
Who marveled all should worship not his queen,
And unto whoso loved her much forgave.
And when, one desperate day, the threatening hand
His hand so long arrested, he being gone,
Felt 'neath its pillow for the unsheath'd sword,
Who spoke for Union but with Webster's voice?
Who struck for Union but with Webster's arm?
Forgetful of the father in the son,
Men praised in Lincoln what they blamed in him.
And though, his natural tenderness grown grave,
He lives not in Love's immortality
Like Lincoln, shrined within his foeman's heart;
Though he trod not the path of him whose soul
Triumphed in song that beckoned armies on
More than persuading drum, dare-devil fife,
Or clarion bugle; though no battle-flame
Rose to a peak in him: yet was his blood
In heroes and his wrath in righteous war.
Then did the vision of his patriot hope,
Pictured in pleading but in warning words,
Inspire the inspirers, nerve the halting brave,
Make triflers solemn with the choice of death.
And when at last came Peace, the friend of all,
Grateful and wondrous as first drops of rain
After the long starvation of the drought,
Men harkened back to that prophetic hour
When two protagonists, like chosen knights,
Made long and suave epitome of war:
When Hayne arose 'twas Sumter's gun was heard,
When Webster closed 'twas Appomattox field.

But oh, his larger triumph was to come!
His voice, in victory potent, was in peace
Predominant. His all-benignant thought
That, never wavering through the strife of words,
No Alleghanies, no Potomac knew,
Searching the future to bring olive back,
Lived like a fragrance in the heart of Grant,
And at the perilous moment of success
Pointed the path to concord from the grave.
And what famed concord! - not a grudging truce,
Nor interlude of hate, but peace divine:
When hands with blood still wet again were clasped,
Each foe forgiving what is ne'er forgot;
The hacked sword eager for the scabbard's rest,
Not from the fear, but for the love of man.
Oh, loftier conquest of the Blue, that warred
For freedom, not for conquest! Victory,
Unsought, of all the hardly vanquished Gray!
Marvel of Europe staggering in arms:
Message of Hope unto the souls that herd
Dumb at the slaughter for the whim of kings;
Lusus of History until wars shall cease
My country! since nor memory of strife,
Nor natural vengeance, nor the orphan's tears
Can from Love's nobler triumph hale thee back:
Who worthier than thou to lead the way
Unto the everlasting Truce of God,
When brothers shall toward brothers over sea
Stretch not the sword-blade, but the open palm,
Till on Time's long but ever-upward slope
They mount together to unreckoned heights,
And grateful nations gladly follow them!
So sang I, proud to be but one of all
The sands upon a shore whereon there breaks,
Freighted with purpose vast, the will of Heaven -
When a rude clash I heard, that yet I hear,
As Discord grasped again her rusted harp
And struck new terror from the raveled strings,
Calling Ambition blindfold to the lead
Of Want, Dishonor, Perfidy, and Crime,
Who in their turn misguide the innocent,
Groping their way by the last firebrands
Plucked from their holocaust of hoarded truth.
The air we fancied peaceful as the noon
Was dark with sudden hatred, as with cloud
Blown, in long-gathered tempest, from the West,
Like a wild storm of summer heat and wind
Circling in passion, bruited by dismay,
And dragging death and chaos in its train,
As some old myth of savagery come true,
And Nature had turned demon, rending Man.

This madness Webster still can medicine,
Who was physician to its earlier taint.
He did not fury then with fury meet,
But to the sanity of eternal law
Wooed back the wandering mind. Who could forget
His calming presence when, ere he began,
Confusion fled before his morning look
Of power miraculously new and mild;
The speech as temperate as a wind of May;
The mind as candid as the noonday light;
The tones deliberate, confident, sedate,
Waking no passion, and yet moving all
With such a high compulsion that at length
Reason, the king that well-nigh had been lost
Upon the confines of his sovereign realm,
Remounted to the throne with steady step,
And men again were proud of his control.

So, in these days of hopeful hearts' despair,
When perils threat, ay, throng the ship of state,
And less from gale without than torch within,
Who - who but Webster with his faith serene
Shall rouse the sleeping to command their fate,
Shall bid them steer by the unswerving stars,
And in them troth with Liberty renew?
Imagination gave his spirit wings,
That, seeing past the tempest and the flame,
He might remind us of our destiny:
To save from faction what was meant for Man;
To cherish brotherhood, simplicity,
The chance for each that is the hope for all;
To guard the realm from Sloth, and Greed, and Waste -
The sateless Gorgons of democracy;
And above all, whatever storm may rage,
To cling to Law, the path of Liberty,
The prop of heaven, the very pulse of God.
Thus our new soil, the home of every seed,
Where first the whole world meets on equal terms,
Shall such new marvels show of man's estate
In knowledge, wisdom, beauty, virtue, power,
The Past shall fade in pity or in scorn,
While fresher joys shall thrill the pulse of earth.

No, Webster's fame not Webster's self can blot.
Fair is perfection's image in the soul,
And yearning for it holds the world to good.
Yet is it such a jewel as may not
Unto a single guardian be entrust,
But to the courage of a multitude
Who all together have what each may lack.
Though men may falter, it is Virtue's strength
To be indelible: our smallest good
By our worst evil cannot be undone.
The discords of that life - how short they fall,
Like ill-strung arrows! But its harmonmies -
Harmonious speech large with harmonious thought -
Dwell in a nation's peace, a nation's hope,
Imperishable music; not the rhythm
Of some remembering moment, but the peal
And crash of conflict unforgettable
Piercing the mid and thick of night. No, no,
That voice of thunder died not with the storm,
But in the dull and coward times of peace
Long shall its echoes rouse the patriot's heart.




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