Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/66

Rh yourself and by others at all times, for your genius has listened only to the whisperings of the beautiful and the pure.

Moreover, a warm nationality runs through all your verse; your imagination took the hue of the youth of our country and has reflected its calm, contemplative moods when the pulses of its early life beat vigorously but smoothly, and no bad passions had distorted its countenance. The clashing whirlwinds of civil war, the sublime energy and perseverance of the people, the martyrdom of myriads of its bravest and best, its new birth through terrible sufferings, will give a more passionate and tragic and varied cast to the literature of the coming generations. A thousand years hence posterity will turn to your pages as those which best mirror the lovely earnestness of the rising Republic, the sweet moments of her years of innocence, when she was all unfamiliar with sorrow, bright with the halo of promise, seizing the great solitudes by the busy hosts of civilization, and guiding the nations of the earth into the pleasant paths of freedom and of peace.

You have derived your inspiration as a poet from your love of Nature, and she has returned your affection, and blessed you as her favored son. At threescore and ten years, your eye is undimmed, your step light and free, as in youth, and the lyre, which ever responded so willingly to your touch, refuses to leave your hand.

Our tribute to you is to the poet; but we should not have paid it, had we not revered you as a man. Your blameless life is a continuous record of patriotism and integrity; and, passing untouched through the fiery conflicts that grow out of the ambition of others, you have, as all agree, preserved a perfect consistency with yourself, and an unswerving and unselfish fidelity to your convictions.

This is high praise, but the period at which we address you removes even the suspicion of flattery, for it is your entrance upon your seventieth year. It is a solemn thing to draw nearer and nearer to eternity. You teach us how to meet old age; with each year you become more and more genial, and cherish larger and still larger sympathies with your fellow-men, and if Time has set on you any mark, you preserve in all its freshness the youth of the soul.