Mother, I’m breathless! I have seen a man,
 The strangest man I ever saw. I’m scared!
 I went down to the hollow, was at play,
 Was marching with my broomstick gun—and then
 While I stood there and said “attention,” playing
 Soldier, you know, reciting to my soldiers,
 I heard a voice—looked round and saw this man.
 He was enormous with a frightful face,
 Black eyes, black hair, a voice that sounded like
 Low thunder, though it could be soft and sweet.
 And he said to me, “What’s your name, my boy?”
 I told him. Then he said, “Where is your father?”
 I said, “My father’s gone.” “Where is your mother?”
 “Up at the house,” I answered. Then he asked,
 “What are you doing here?” “Why, playing soldier.”
 “Are you a patriot?” And I said yes.
 “Oh, no,” he said, “your father was an actor;
 I saw him play the part of Brutus often,
 And you will be an actor, you’ve the look.”
 How did he know these things, do you suppose?
 And then he said, “Recite for me.” “I can’t,”
 I said to him. “O yes, you can,” he said.
 “You must recite for me.” And I was scared,
 Began to cry, and he said, “Hush, my boy,
 I will not hurt you, but you must recite,
 I want to see what you have memorized.”
 So I was choking, but I tried to do it:
 “The tyrannous and bloody deed is done,
 The most arch act of piteous massacre
 That ever yet this land was guilty of.” ...
“No Richard III,” he said. “Here look at me!
 Why do you dodge? Why not recite some words
 From Brutus, for you know them, why, my boy?
 You’ve heard your father speak the words of Brutus.
 Why do you hide your knowledge? Look at me!”
 He terrified me so that I began:
 “It must be by his death: and for my part
 I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
 But for the general. He would be crowned:
 How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
 It is the bright day that brings forth the adder.”
 I got so far and saw him looking down,
 As if he saw—I don’t know what—and then
 I stopped and looked—and there I saw an adder
 Coiled close to me. I jumped and screamed. He laughed—
 I ran away, and left him standing there.
 Mother, I am afraid. Who was this man?
 My head hurts. I’m afraid. Keep close to me—
 I am so frightened.

JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH

(On a steamboat bound for Cincinnati from New Orleans, November 30th, 1852.)

You are a doctor? Ill? I’m very ill.
 My soul is worn, it is a ghastly life,
 This acting, traveling, living through the passions
 Of Brutus, and Orestes, Richard III.
 My father tried to make a lawyer of me,
 But fate is fate. My age is fifty-six,
 But counting by the moments I have lived
 A thousand years were nearer truth. Oh, well,
 What if this talking tire me, I am tired
 With such fatigue that nothing adds to it.
 And if I die, why what will be, will be.
 I’d like to see “The Farm” in Maryland
 Just once again, see Mary, that’s my wife,
 John Wilkes, my boy, and Junius Brutus, too—
 Edwin I left in California,
 Shall never see him more I fear—but then
 What comes to us must come.
That brandy helps,
 I’m better now.
Oh, yes, it’s true my father
 Would make a lawyer of me, couldn’t do it—
 I am a better lawyer than he was
 For acting parts and living other lives,
 Thus finding laws of life—but what’s the good?
 You can’t find happiness, all is vanity.
 If you’re a strolling player, vanity;
 Vexation too and jealousy and strife.
 If all the house goes mad to see you rage
 As life-like as the Moor did, do they know
 What realest envy stalks behind the scenes,
 What you have done to keep your golden voice,
 Your strength to paint the frenzy of Othello?
After one greatest triumph I sat alone,
 Was playing solitaire, who should come in?
 Chief Justice Marshall, friend of mine? Oh, yes.
 He said, “I think you’d be the happiest
 Of men, why not enjoy what you’ve achieved?”
 “Judge,” I replied, “you see me here alone,
 There is no ecstasy, no drop of joy
 For me save in that moment when I see,
 Both through my genius glowing and the cries
 And plaudits from the house, that I have struck.
 The fateful note that thrills—all other hours
 Are spent in saving power and making ready
 For just that moment. What’s an actor, poet?
 A medium round whom the spirits swarm
 Like bats in Tartarus and shrill Me! Me!
 Take now and write, speak for me—make it clear,
 You are our hope of truth, of being known
 For what we are. And so you’re never done.
 The spirits dash about you with their cries;
 Men note your eyes turned inward—move away.
 And you must keep in vigor. Hoarseness rasps
 The voice of Brutus, you must catch no cold.
 You drink sometimes to deafen ears against
 The spirits’ crying, but you pay for it,
 Must climb back into strength, but while you’re weak
 The spirits are a-crying, there you are,
 Ambitious but enfeebled, can’t respond,
 And tortured for it. There is no escape.
 And so you play at solitaire.”
 The Judge
 Replied: “A judge is lonely, for his reasons
 Must keep himself aloof.”
 Yes, I knew Kean.
 He played Othello to my great Iago,
 And I say great, for I was twenty-one,
 And made the London English shout and howl:
 “Great Booth forever,” though they shouted, too,
 “No Booth” and “down with Booth,” the partisans
 Of Kean, the envious. And on a time
 It’s Drury Lane, and what an audience!
 Hazlitt is there and Godwin, Shelley’s friend,
 John Howard Payne, who wrote “The Fall of Tarquin.”
 He saw that Kean was envious, would not be
 Excelled by me and wrote as much.
My friend,
 Another drink of brandy!
Well, at last
 I make America my home. ’Twere well
 If I am spared to write my memories,
 They throng so at this moment. God be praised,
 I knew Old Hickory and supped with him,
 A man from top to toe! And I have lived,
 Fought, suffered, triumphed, lived through self and lived
 Through Brutus, Lear, and Richard.
Look at me,
 Am I a man you’d ever take for mad?
 Mad-men have struck at me, a lunatic
 Struck at me with an ax, I cowed his hate
 And fixed him with my eye. But as for me,
 Here have I been for life a lover of home,
 A husband blest with happiness in a wife,
 And yet reputed mad. For little things
 Like this reputed mad: I’m playing Shylock,
 The call boy searches me, my time has come,
 Where was I? In a closet. Was it queer?
 A symptom? No! I hid to shut the light
 Of other things external from the mind
 Of Shylock’s mood. Why, is it strange at all
 For a soul that incarnates itself with souls
 Like Brutus’ and Lear’s to lose itself,
 Seem sometimes naked, trembling, swaying too
 With such exhaustion, such tremendous change?
 These common minds see not the genius mind
 For what it is, forget the strength and wisdom
 That makes the genius, in my case, forget
 My books and scholarship, my toil, who learned
 Greek, Latin, German, French and Arabic,
 Hebrew and Spanish; the philosophies,
 I’ve mastered in my life.
I tremble too
 For thinking of my little son, John Wilkes,
 So beautiful and gifted, has the touch;
 Is full of dreams, goes charging on his horse,
 Spouting heroic speeches, lance in hand
 There on “The Farm,” a patriot and a lover
 Of liberty even now. What will he be,
 A statesman or an actor, warrior, what?
 God knows alone, and what his fate God knows.
 I named him after John Wilkes, patriot
 And English libertarian—but no matter,
 He’ll do what he will do. They named me Brutus
 And I became an actor, not a statesman,
 Warrior, no tyrannicide.
Hold there!
 What is this? Take my hand! Sharp pain again—
 Pray! pray! pray!

(He dies.)

A CERTAIN POET ON THE DEBATES

(At Alton, Illinois, October 15th, 1858.)

(Arguing with a group at the hotel.)

Why do I speak with such authority?
 I know this matter through from A to Z;
 I know it just as well as Lincoln knows it.
 There’s not a document I have not studied
 From Elliott’s Debates to this Le Compton
 Kansas constitution that has escaped
 My mind’s analysis. And you will see
 Lincoln is beaten now. You are absurd
 To think he’ll win the presidency for losing
 The senatorship—clean crazy all of you!
Who am I? Well, it makes no difference.
 I am a mind, a mere intelligence
 Going about this year of fifty-eight
 An observer and a listener. Gabriel
 Could be no more impersonal than I.
 I’ve followed up these fellows like the boy
 That trails the circus, clear from Ottawa
 To Freeport, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton;
 And made my way at first with sawing wood,
 Later by selling razors, soap and strops;
And just to hear the speaking, see the crowds—
 These crowds that leave the shop and farms, these crowds
 Solemn and noisy, rapt, tumultuous,
 Sober and drunk, who carry whips and spit
 Tobacco juice around and drink and eat.
 The babies squall, wagons and democrats
 Befog the air with dust, and oh, the heat!
 Yet though these crowds will settle like the dust
 In graves all over Illinois, nothing leave
 Of what, or who they were, no less these crowds
 Have reason at the centre like the sun;
 Dimmed to the eyes this side; the sun is there!
 But yet the sun knows it is there—the dust
 Rises and shows the sun—there you have thought
 Which is now, will be handed down of this—
 These days. Oh, yes, the dust will rise at last
 When evening—that’s reflection, settles down;
 And then you’ll see a star—first magnitude,
 The name is Lincoln!
I have read. I know.
 Never in Rome or Greece were such debates,
 Never in all this world. Look at the theme:
 Slavery in a republic! As for men,
 Where is their equal? Is it Pericles,
 Demosthenes or Cicero, here with us,
 Great Webster? And the setting, think of that!
 Here in this western prairie state they pass
 From town to town, stand up before the mass,
 And battle with their wits—set falcons loose
 Of swift and ravenous logic to devour
 The other’s flights. The crowds perceive the trend,
 Gather enough to guide them and persuade,
 But much of it is over them. You heard
 Lincoln to-day, when he had subtilized
 The point to deadly ether, say to them:
 “An audience like this will scarcely see
 The force of what I say, but minds well trained
 Will follow me and see.” That is the point.
 Out of this popular oratory rises
 A durable spire of truth. This Lincoln leaves
 Great thought and beauty to the race. And yet
 Douglas will be our senator, and Seward
 Our President two years from now. As Webster
 Could never win the prize, this Lincoln too
 Will fail to win it.
Why, you silly fools!
 Lincoln has sprained his arms and back for good—
 But he has laid the South out flat and cold,
 And broken the slavocracy in two.
 He did it with one question; asking that
 He made the Little Giant cough and stammer,
 And blush his guilt before America.
 Oh, yes, he answered well enough to win
 This contest here in Illinois; but look,
 The Southern press is after him already,
 They scent the carcass moved, withdrawn a little;
 They croak like buzzards—and there will be war
 Between the eagles and the buzzards now,
 Perhaps when Seward is elected; truly
 If Lincoln should be chosen, as he won’t.
 It isn’t that this Douglas isn’t a master.
 It is that he is caught between the mill-stones.
 The upper is this Kansas and Nebraska,
 The lower is Dred Scott—and I am glad!
 Why did he father Kansas and Nebraska?
 Why did he flout the ancient ordinance
 Of 1787, which kept out
 This curse of slavery, out of Illinois,
 But brought us liberty of press and speech,
 The bill of rights? Did Congress have the power
 To pass this ordinance of ’87?
 Or did it lack the power, because the states
 That came into the union with their slaves
 Might keep their slaves, reclaim as fugitive
 Their slaves on freedom’s soil? Well, if it be
 That Congress had the power to plaster down
 The ordinance of 1787
 Upon this Illinois, this great Northwest,
 It had the power to say the western land
 Of Kansas and Nebraska should be free
 As territories ruled from Washington
 And no imperialism! So, I say again
 It serves this Douglas right to be destroyed,
 And ground to powder for this act of his,
 This Kansas and Nebraska.
Well, all right.
 It sounds all right, it makes the idiots whoop
 To hear the Little Giant say he favors
 The people’s rule in Kansas and Nebraska.
 Their right to say they’ll have this slavery
 Or have it not—yes, popular sovereignty!—
 But why not let the people vote on God,
 Or choose a king, or take me, all the whites,
 And make us slaves? It may be so, if truth
 Is just a mockery and there’s nothing real
 In human thought at all—one thing is true
 As anything, and everything is false.
Thus ruin smites the temple of our life,
 And all of us lie down as beasts and grunt
 Around its broken arches and its columns!
All right! He gets his Kansas and Nebraska.
 That makes him president! Not on your life!
 Momus is watching, growls a horrid laugh
 And whispers something to Slavocracy,
 Which whispers it to Taney—and behold
 The prophets and the guardians of the ark
 Of the covenant declare a slave’s a slave,
 And can be taken to a territory,
 And kept there in the face of national law
 That makes the territory free. Or else,
 Were this not so, the Congress is supreme,
 Has slipped the chain of the organic law,
 Which recognizes slavery. What is this
 But just imperialism?
God Almighty!
 They’re all for freedom, a republic too.
 Kansas, Nebraska—let the people rule.
 Dred Scott:—the Congress is a Parliament
 Like England has, unless it pins and tucks
 The constitution round its pocky body.
 That may be true, but then the question is:
 Is slavery charactered upon the robe,
 And must the figure of the slave be seen
 Wherever Congress walks?
I’ll come to that.
 The point is now that Douglas has been caught
 Between his Kansas and Nebraska act,
 And Dred Scott never his. And being lawful,
 Obedient to the law and to the courts—
 You heard him hammer Lincoln as a man
 Who flouted courts—while he, the Little Giant,
 Obeyed the laws—oh, yes!—So, being lawful,
 As I began, must hold in level hands
 Dred Scott in one, and in the other hand
 This Kansas and Nebraska.
Very good.
 Lincoln has got him now, and out of all
 This rhetoric, these sorties half successful,
 These scrimmages with Lincoln, half perplexed,
 You find your Little Giant on his back
 With Lincoln over him and pinning shoulders
 Down to the floor.
Here is the wrestling trick:
 Can any territory keep this slavery
 Out lawfully, that is, against the wish
 Of any citizen? What is the answer?
 If you say yes, where is Dred Scott? If no,
 How do the people rule?
What is his answer?
 Why, yes, he says, a territory can
 Keep slavery out. Dred Scott still sends it there,
 But then the people rule, and if the people
 There in Nebraska make it hot for slavery
 By local law and custom, frowns and blows,
 It will not thrive. That satisfied the crowd;
 Enough at least, elects him Senator,
 But loses him the South, the golden prize,
 Splits up the country, gives us war in time,
 When argument is silenced cannon boom—
 And when your Seward comes to Washington
 The South secedes.
Now, listen for a moment!
 What is Abe Lincoln’s genealogy
 In faith political? Sired by the Federalists,
 And mothered by the Whigs. A tariff man;
 Believes too in the Bank—tariffs and banks
 Filched from the plenary stores of privilege
 By hands that break the shackles of the law.
 He’s born a Whig, has turned Republican,
 What is his blood? Why, liberal construction,
 Twisting the constitution out of shape,
 And tearing holes in it to let the Congress
 Escape and wander—where? Why, anywhere!
 And though it be that touching slavery
 There’s nothing which forbids the Congress acting
 In freedom’s way—and that’s the very point—
 And granting that the Constitution’s over
 The territories, still the Congress can
 Bring freedom there—this theory is akin
 To loose construction, scarcely can be told
 From loose construction. For you see, if freedom,
 Since Congress is not hampered, can be brought,
 Why not then slavery, if it be not hampered?
 And why not colonies, dependencies,
 Ruled just as Congress wills, if never a word
 Lies in our charter to forbid or grant
 The power to do it.
Well, there’ll be a war,
 And hell thereafter. So you like my talk!
 What is my name? Why, Satan is my name—
 And I go wandering on the earth to see,
 Walk to and fro and laugh and drop a tear
 In spite of all my laughter. Tears and laughter
 For ideas in the heads of men that seethe,
 Pop, crackle, ferment, blow up bottles, kegs,
 Spill and destroy bacteria on the floor
 Of epochs, ruin wisdoms, cultures, faiths.
 Time scrubs the floor of all such verses—Time
 Matures fresh grapes, new ferments, and repeats
 The old catastrophes; and hence I laugh,
 And drop a tear on all the sorry waste.

PART II

THE DECISION

(April 14th, 1861.)

Lincoln is sitting absorbed in thought in an office of the executive mansion, where he has been in consultation with his cabinet. A telegraph instrument has ceased to click, but the wires are droning. Lincoln suddenly falls into a sleep, at once profound and trance-like. In the vision members of his cabinet and secretaries move in and out of the room.

Lincoln
So there are five?
A Voice
Yes, five to two.
Seward’s Voice
A month
 Has gone by and no policy. You should
 Take hold yourself, or on a cabinet member
 Devolve the task.
Lincoln
Whatever’s to be done
 Is mine to do.
Seward’s Voice
Fort Sumpter leave alone!
 If we employ armed force we have begun
 A civil war—without armed force we fail.
 We cannot take the fort and keep the fort,
 Unless we subjugate the States as well.
 No, let us not first draw the sword.
Lincoln
To say—
A Voice
Yes, five to two.
Seward’s Voice
Your cabinet opposes
 The Fort’s provisioning.
Lincoln
The property
 And military posts, the forts which were
 In our possession when the government
 Came to my hands, I shall defend and hold.
 I shall collect the duties, but beyond
 Such things make no invasion.
A Voice
And the mails?
Another Voice
Fort Sumpter has been shelled!
Seward’s Voice
So I forewarned you.
Another Voice
That was an error.
Another Voice
May I ask a question?
 Will you invade the country to collect
 The duties, or relieve a fort alone
 Where duties are in question?
Lincoln
My inaugural—
Another Voice
To hell with forts and duties—free the slaves!
Seward’s Voice
Drop slavery! Before the people raise
 The question: Is it Union or Disunion!
Another Voice
I say to let the erring Sisters go.
Another Voice
I care more for the principles—
Another Voice
Be still!
 I’m sick of principles—
The Same Voice
The principles
 Of local democratic government are worth
 Twice over all the niggers.
Another Voice
Senator,
 You are most eloquent when full of drink.
Another Voice
Would you unite the North? Maneuver them
 To fire upon the Fort.
Another Voice
The time has come
 To open up the question with the sword:
 Is this a league, is this a nation, which?
Another Voice
What do you want, a tariff or a bank?
 Take off your nigger mask, you centralist!
Another Voice
A contract broken by a signatory
 Absolves the other signatory.
Another Voice
Yes
 The Yankee cotton spinner—
Another Voice
Singing psalms!
Another Voice
The radicals have brought us to this pass,
 This agitation, hatred sectional.
Douglas’ Voice
All seem to overlook this vital matter:
 The President can use the military
 Where only States request it.
Another Voice
You forget
 The act of ’75.
Douglas’ Voice
I don’t forget.
 The act of ’75 does not apply,
 Except to laws resisted, where a marshall
 Is overpowered.
Another Voice
And there is no marshall,
 There is no judge in the seceded States.
Another Voice
You will appoint one, so you promised.
Lincoln
Yes.
Douglas’ Voice
Then, sir, what cause is there for apprehension?
 Who dares to say your President will pursue
 A policy of war, unless he call
 On Congress for the means and for the power?
Another Voice
I ask about Fort Sumpter—are there ships
 With cargoes of provisions on their way?—
Another Voice
Yes, they have sailed.
Other Voices
No! No!
Another Voice
Oh, yes, the seven governors from the North
 Have changed his policy. He now intends
 To overthrow the federative law.
 O great conspiracy—O seven-headed
 Apocalyptic Beast!

The vision grows confused. Lincoln seems to himself to attempt to arise from the chair but is unable to do so. The scene whirls about like drifting mist, struck by a sudden current of air, in which there are lights and faces. Voices are mingled together indistinguishably and then fade away. There is a silence. Out of the confusion two figures emerge, one bright, the other shadowy. Both are images of Lincoln. They become seated in a boat which is moving with great rapidity. The only sound is the droning of the telegraph.

First Phantom
Twice have I seen this fateful scene before.
Second Phantom
The depths are moving, but no waters roar.
 A mountain silence clasps the air and sea.
 Look through the glassy fathoms far below:
 Beneath us glides the ocean’s dizzy floor
 Which we skim over with a swallow’s speed.
First Phantom
I see a shadowy shore and precipices.
 Yes, this portends my spirit’s earthly woe.
Second Phantom
You shall not shrink! What though your heart shall bleed
 Its last drop out walking the abysses,
 You must go forth—the hour has struck for you!
 The little freedoms of your life are past,
 As youth may choose its work or happiness;
 Now you must steer the boat through fog and blast.
 This rock encircled water is no less
 Than your soul captured in the trap of Fate.
 Far over stands ’twixt earth and heaven a gate
 Where souls depart and enter into Time,
 You must set foot upon this shore and climb
 And blindly your election make, renew
 Your will and spirit.
First Phantom
Tell me what to do?
Second Phantom
Heal, if you can, the nation’s growing scars,
 Let harmony come out of harsh discord.
First Phantom
Suppose the seven States first draw the sword?
 Have they not drawn it now?
Second Phantom
All bloody wars
 Furnish great argument to place the blame
 For the first blow. But even if it’s blood
 That blots the bond of human brotherhood,
 Behold the pangs that flow from human pride
 When slaughter by such blood is justified.
First Phantom
What shall I do with giants who rebel?
Second Phantom
You do but traffic in a word, a name,
 A word it is with which you may inflame
 To mob-like fury a judicious nation—
 So you may enter on an usurpation.
First Phantom
What do you say? Am I a tyrant then?
Second Phantom
Already have you thought of arming men
 Without the sovereign sanction of the law.
First Phantom
But if I don’t mad Treason will have gained
 Such progress that it will have quite attained
 Its purpose to bind down and overawe
 Conciliation or resistance even.
Second Phantom
You arrogate the very will of heaven,
 As tyrants do, and in your purpose find
 A small reflection of the eternal mind.
 What do you know of this? But if you rest
 On human will and thought you must concede
 A contradiction in your dream, who break
 The law a rebel spirit to arrest.
 This is a way of sowing nettle seed.
 Once you were faithful to a better creed,
 That men may found new nations when the old
 No longer have the people’s fair consent.
 Rights are not hostile. If this be a right
 How may you overthrow it with your might?
First Phantom
Have you not heard this story of me told:
 At New Orleans I saw the children cry
 When from the auction block their sire was sold.
 I then resolved to strike this curse a blow
 If ever Heaven gave
 My arm the strength. It is my deepest hate.
Second Phantom
This is the thought then lying further back
 In your fanatic spirit, child of woe,
 Reached through a devious and hidden track!
 For this you will prepare your country’s grave.
 You will free some, but only to enslave
 A wider realm of being.
First Phantom
I would know
 What may be best.
Second Phantom
The country is at peace.
 You do not dare to ask your Congress for
 Troops on the Southern people to make war.
First Phantom
I do not need to ask. I have enrolled
 An oath with God the Nation to uphold.
Second Phantom
But if you call the troops will you not ask
 Congress to validate your powers’ increase
 And sharpening of the sword for such a task?
 You do not answer. Well, if this may be
 Do you not contemplate a tyranny?
First Phantom
What is this rupture but a mere defection,
 What might be called rebellion, insurrection
 Against the laws, which I must overthrow,
 As others did before me from the first?
 No word writ in the charter of the nation
 Has made provision for its termination.
Second Phantom
But not to argue this—you have reversed
 Your mind upon the right of revolution.
First Phantom
Not for a righteous or a holy cause.
Second Phantom
You test it in your own soul’s resolution.
 But tell me when there are no writs or laws
 For you to execute in the Southern land
 How are you acting?
First Phantom
But I still command
 The property and forts, and other places
 Belonging to the Nation.
Second Phantom
Understand
 Their territory all such forts embraces
 And sovereignty thereover is resumed.
 You cannot have a war on that account,
 When they would pay you for the places lost.
First Phantom
First the rebellious spirit must surmount
 The barriers that keep them home with us.
 They cannot leave us, cannot take and hold
 What is not theirs, or what if they had sold
 They could not grant.
Second Phantom
That is but bloody gold.
 And what you say if acted on will bring
 A million deaths.
First Phantom
They are responsible
 For all the consequences if they cling
 To this rebellious purpose.
Second Phantom
To compel
 This fortress’s provisioning
 Will be a blow first struck. It is the law:
 The first blow of a war is struck by him
 Who makes the first blow needful to be struck.
First Phantom
You put the woven substance in a ruck.
 I leave the issue of a war with them.
 They shall not be assailed, nor may they have
 Conflict with me unless they first aggress
 The government.
Second Phantom
Oh, then they must withdraw
 Resistance to your plan.
First Phantom
Well, I confess
 No open plan, as yet. But now attend:
 I have an oath in heaven registered
 The Union to preserve, protect, defend;
 They have no oath the Union to destroy.
Second Phantom
What is the Union but a verbal toy
 Like Justice, Beauty, Liberty or Truth?
 And as for them they need not take an oath,
 They need but act.
First Phantom
The Union is unbroken, is a pact
 Which cannot be erased or torn apart
 By less than half of those who gave it breath.
Second Phantom
How does a State sink partly into death
 By joining other States? Can it accede
 And thereby lose its virtue to secede?
First Phantom
The Union is much older than accession.
Second Phantom
Some Union, not the Union which you rule.
 The states which formed the old Confederacy
 Withdrew to form the Union. Liberty
 Is older than all States.
 Her handmaiden has always been secession.
First Phantom
These arguments are used but to befool
 The minds who loathe the wrong they would conceal.
 No justice will be lost by him who waits.
Second Phantom
They ask a council for the general weal
 Of all the States these matters to arrange
 Without the flow of blood.
First Phantom
I shall not change
 What I have said: If God who rules above,
 Almighty Ruler of all nations, deems
 Eternal truth with them, or with our side,
 That truth eternal ever must abide.
Second Phantom
But after all the truth is that which seems
 The truth to you. And if mankind you love,
 Why draw the sword to justify such truth?
 Has any warrior of the world said more?
First Phantom
The people may be trusted to restore
 All broken rights, to them I leave all things.
Second Phantom
What do you say? These dubious wanderings
 Travel along a pathway scarcely smooth.
 You vowed to let no forces intermit
 The Nation’s laws in no place, save the means
 Which should be requisite,
 Were by the people from your arms withheld.
 You do not let them choose when you’ve compelled
 Their action by your act, which intervenes
 Their virgin will and what you do before
 You learn its voice. Yes, so arise all wars!
 What people ever had a chance to voice
 Free and deliberate their honest choice
 ’Twixt war and peace? Kings leave them to deplore
 The initial step while fighting to retrieve
 Or mitigate its ills. Your counselors
 Have spoken, and your counselors believe
 The pending step unwise. So at the last
 Out of all dialectics stand two men
 Each judging, each appealing to the shrine
 Of God, Eternal Justice, all unknown,
 Save as they see reflections of them cast
 In their refracted speculations—then
 What is it but the clash of sovereignties
 Grown firmer from offense and wounded pride?
 Yet cunning to manipulate decrees
 With forethought in successive acts to hide
 Provocative offenses, put in fault
 The other sovereign for the first assault.
First Phantom
One man may risk his life, or suffer wrong,
 He has no other but himself at stake.
 A ruler has been chosen to be strong,
 And save his people for his people’s sake.
 The clearest vision, most commanding power,
 Interprets and must rule the hour,
 Must call its purest sense of duty God.
 Must stake its being now, in worlds to come
 Before what thrones of judgment chance to be.
 One phase alone of life’s immensity
 May one o’ermaster, though it bring him doom
 For things unseen, the path he never trod
 Strewn with his errors. Yet he may be free
 By acting through that genesis and win
 Approval for the warp. No soul has room
 For growth in love, but may it also thrive
 To needed power in thought. If heaven require
 Excess in either, while the other shrinks
 In heaven’s ends, should heaven then requite
 The sacrifice with penitential fire?
 It is enough that whosoever drinks
 Of such success finds bitterness within,
 The cup on earth. Can anyone begrudge
 The work before me, sword that I possess?
 Nor do I of another’s motives judge.
 If rights conflict not, yet one master right
 Attuned to highest law must still prevail
 And lesser laws must fail.
 The winds of destiny may bear me far,
 Which out of deepest heaven are arising.
 I have one compass and one guiding star,
 One altar for my spirit’s sacrificing:
 The Union is my soul’s profoundest love.
Second Phantom
If you knew heaven’s wish you might fulfill it,
 Seen heaven’s law revealed, then you might will it,
 What man can say he knows the word thereof?
 Oh, not alone you dedicate your life
 To this adventure in uncertain strife!
 You give the Nation’s blood and spirit too.
 If you could know the Nation would renew
 Its strength in years or cycles from your thought,
 And through your godlike daring might be wrought
 To finer triumphs in the time to come,
 You would have warrant to pronounce the doom
 Of blood and tears to fertilize the soil,
 Where at the start revenge and hate will grow.
 But what unending sorrow may recoil
 Upon your purposes, who do not know?
First Phantom
What are these cliffs of purple which we near?
 Gray castes of stagnant mists above them lie.
 The boat glides downward as if in a sphere
 Of liquid crystal mowing, dizzily
 The forked rocks point upward to the sky—
 Have I then died?
Second Phantom
There is a place of moss
 Whereon the prow must strike lest it be crushed.
First Phantom
This is the world’s end. How the air is hushed!
Second Phantom
Come now! You have been ferried well across.
 There! We have landed. Hear the whispering keel.
First Phantom
I’m growing faint.
Second Phantom
Much still must I reveal.
 We two must stand on yonder highest rock.
First Phantom
It cannot be!
Second Phantom
I will the door unlock.
 They may not be away. First let me knock.

(He knocks on the cliff. The vision grows cloudy.)