Ode Recited at the Commemoration to the Living and Dead Soldiers of Harvard University
Ode Recited at the Commemoration to the Living and Dead Soldiers of Harvard University,by Lowell, privately printed in 1865 and published in The Cathedral (1877). It is in the irregular form of the Pindaric ode as adapted by Cowley.
Although song is “weak-winged,” yet “feathered words” will recall the love for Truth that inspired the sons of Harvard to sacrifice their lives and make faith “whole with deed.” Such sacrifice for an ideal gives the world of constant change “a high immunity from Night.” Lincoln is symbolic of the courageous warrior against falsehood, and as long as men are loyal to an inspiring goal “outside of Self” they shall revere those who have died for its preservation. In gratitude, they shall give “that plain civic wreath,” nobler than the feudal rewards of Europe, for it is no one man who is celebrated, but rather “the pith and marrow of a nation.”
[The entire page is 159 words long]
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