The Master

    Lincoln as he appeared to one soon after the Civil War

    A FLYING word from here and there
    Had sown the name at which we sneered,
    To be reviled and then revered:
    A presence to be loved and feared--
    We cannot hide it, or deny
    That we, the gentlemen who jeered,
    May be forgotten by and by.

    He came when days were perilous
    And hearts of men were sore beguiled,
    And having made his note of us,
    He pondered and was reconciled.
    Was ever master yet so mild
    As he, and so untamable?
    We doubted, even when he smiled,
    Not knowing what he knew so well.

    He knew that undeceiving fate
    Would shame us whom he served unsought;
    He knew that he must wince and wait--
    The jest of those for whom he fought;
    He knew devoutly what he thought
    Of us and of our ridicule;
    He knew that we must all be taught
    Like little children in a school.

    We gave a glamour to the task
    That he encountered and saw through;
    But little of us did he ask,
    And little did we ever do.
    And what appears if we review
    The season when we railed and chaffed?--
    It is the face of one who knew
    That we were learning while we laughed.

    The face that in our vision feels
    Again the venom that we flung,
    Transfigured to the world reveals
    The vigilance to which we clung.
    Shrewd, hallowed, harassed, and among
    The mysteries that are untold--
    The face we see was never young,
    Nor could it wholly have been old.

    For he, to whom we had applied
    Our shopman's test of age and worth,
    Was elemental when he died
    As he was ancient at his birth:
    The saddest among kings of earth,
    Bowed with a galling crown, this man
    Met rancor with a cryptic mirth,
    Laconic--and Olympian.

    The love, the grandeur, and the fame
    Are bounded by the world alone;
    The calm, the smouldering, and the flame
    Of awful patience were his own:
    With him they are forever flown
    Past all our fond self-shadowings,
    Wherewith we cumber the Unknown
    As with inept Icarian wings.

    For we were not as other men:
    'Twas ours to soar and his to see.
    But we are coming down again,
    And we shall come down pleasantly;
    Nor shall we longer disagree
    On what it is to be sublime,
    But flourish in our pedigree
    And have one Titan at a time.

        Edwin Arlington Robinson