TRIBUTES TO NATHAN HALE
When Captain Montressor told Hale's dismayed friends of the terrible
doom that had befallen their comrade, it must have seemed as if all the
influence Hale might have had in a prolonged life, all that could come
to such a man, had been sacrificed. We must not blame them if the
question involuntarily rose in their hearts, "Why such waste? Why was
such an influence so permanently destroyed?" Curiously enough, many
years passed with little special notice by the public of Hale's death.
But the leaven of patriotism works, even though slowly, and step by step
Hale was coming to his own. Little by little the memory of his sacrifice
for his country, and the fact that he had left words that should glow
with increasing splendor, took possession of those who had ears to hear
and hearts to remember.
Old Linonia in Yale did not forget the splendid boy, once its
Chancellor, who died as he had lived. Linonia's records still bear, in
clear and perfect lines, reports his hand had written when he was its
most assiduous member. Others might have forgotten him; Linonia had not.
On its one-hundredth anniversary, July 27, 1853,--Commencement
Week,--the poet of the occasion was Francis Miles Finch, Yale, 1846,
later Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. As poet, Mr. Finch of
course recalled many former members of the society. He ended with a poem
on Nathan Hale in which he held his listeners spellbound as stanza after
stanza, magnetic in proportion to their truthful beauty, fell from his
lips.
There has been a further service to his country by Judge Finch. His own
character has been graven into two different poems,--the one just
referred to, and one that he wrote later. The latter poem had,
undoubtedly, a powerful influence in causing our national Decoration Day
to be celebrated throughout the United States.
The story of this poem is interesting. In a town in Mississippi certain
Southern women went on a spring day, soon after the close of the Civil
War, to cover with flowers the graves of their beloved dead. The
gracious and tender thought must have come to them that in the graves of
aliens buried among them lay those as deeply mourned in Northern homes
as were those they themselves had loved.
Certainly no sweeter suggestion could have been more tenderly carried
out than that which led these bereaved women to spread flowers over the
graves of those who were once their enemies. Mr. Finch was told of this
incident, and the lines he wrote show his appreciation of the "generous
deed." The poem, "The Blue and the Gray," did much to heal the wounds in
both North and South.
The two poems by Judge Francis Miles Finch are quoted here, the first
with the drum-beat pulsing through it; the second in musical, flowing
lines that carry in them sorrow, loyalty, and the community of a common
bereavement.
HALE'S FATE AND FAME
And one there was--his name immortal now--
Who dies not to the ring of rattling steel,
Or battle-march of spirit-stirring drum,
But, far from comrades and from friendly camp,
Alone upon the scaffold.
To drum-beat and heart-beat
A soldier marches by;
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye,
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die.
By starlight and moonlight
He seeks the Briton's camp,
He hears the rustling flag,
And the armed sentry's tramp.
And the starlight and moonlight
His silent wanderings lamp.
With slow tread and still tread
He scans the tented line,
And he counts the battery guns
By the gaunt and shadowy pine,
And his slow tread and still tread
Give no warning sign.
The dark wave, the plumed wave!
It meets his eager glance;
And it sparkles 'neath the stars
Like the glimmer of a lance:
A dark wave, a plumed wave,
On an emerald expanse.
A sharp clang, a steel clang!
And terror in the sound;
For the sentry, falcon-eyed,
In the camp a spy hath found;
With a sharp clang, a steel clang,
The patriot is bound.
With calm brow, steady brow,
He listens to his doom;
In his look there is no fear
Nor a shadow trace of gloom;
But with calm brow and steady brow
He robes him for the tomb.
In the long night, the still night,
He kneels upon the sod;
And the brutal guards withhold
E'en the solemn Word of God!
In the long night, the still night,
He walks where Christ hath trod.
'Neath the blue morn, the sunny morn,
He dies upon the tree;
And he mourns that he can lose
But one life for Liberty;
And in the blue morn, the sunny morn,
His spirit-wings are free.
His last words, his message words,
They burn, lest friendly eye
Should read how proud and calm
A patriot could die,
With his last words, his dying words,
A soldier's battle-cry!
From Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf,
From monument and urn,
The sad of Earth, the glad of Heaven,
His tragic fate shall learn;
And on Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf,
The name of HALE shall burn!
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron had fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew;
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one the Blue;
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the laurel, the Blue;
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers,
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue;
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray.
On the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the evacuation of New York
by the British--November 25, 1893--a bronze statue of Nathan Hale was
presented to the city of New York. It was given by the New York Society
of the "Sons of the American Revolution," a society founded in 1876 to
perpetuate the memory and deeds of the war for American independence.
The presentation was made by the president of the society, Mr. Frederic
Samuel Tallmadge, the grandson of Major Tallmadge, Hale's classmate and
fellow-captain. The statue is of bronze and is by Frederick Macmonnies
of Paris. It represents Hale bareheaded, bound about his arms and his
ankles, ready for his death. It was placed in City Hall Park where Hale
was, for a time, supposed to have been executed. On the pedestal are
graven his last wonderful words.
During the exercises at the unveiling of this statue Dr. Edward Everett
Hale said: "The occasion, I suppose, is without a parallel in history.
Certainly, I know of no other instance where, more than a century after
the death of a boy of twenty-one, his countrymen assembled in such
numbers as are here to do honor to his memory and to dedicate the statue
which preserves it.
"He died near this spot, saying, 'I am sorry that I have but one life to
give for my country.' And because that boy said those words, and because
he died, thousands of other young men have given their lives to his
country; have served her as she bade them serve her, even though they
died as she bade them die."
The day's celebration was concluded by a dinner of the Society. Dr. Hale
spoke on this occasion also. He said in part:
"Let us never forget that this is the monument of a young man--that he
is the young man's hero. Let us never forget how the country then
trusted young men and how worthy they were of the trust. It was at the
very time of which I spoke that Washington first knew Hamilton and asked
him to his tent. Hamilton had already won the confidence of Greene.
Hamilton was, I think, in his nineteenth year. Knox, who commanded
Hamilton's regiment, was, I think, twenty-four. Webb, who commanded
Hale's regiment, was twenty-two. When, the next year, Washington
welcomed Lafayette, whom Congress appointed major-general, he
[Lafayette] was not twenty. And Washington himself, before whom others
stood abashed, had only attained the venerable age of forty-four. The
country needed her young men. She called for them and she had them. It
is one of those young men who, dying at twenty-one, leaves as his only
word of regret that he has but one life to give to her."
Although it is now known that Hale was not executed near City Hall Park,
in some respects there could be no more fitting location for a monument
to him than this, perhaps the busiest conflux of human beings that
anywhere crowd this great city. Thousands pass this statue, learning
from it their first lessons in American history. Hundreds have stopped,
seeing this bareheaded, dauntless man, evidently doomed to die, to try
to learn whence he came and why he stands there, appealing to the
noblest patriotism--patriotism that must touch the heart of any man who
knows the love of country.
Since this statue was placed, memorials of various kinds to Nathan Hale
have been erected in several parts of the country. The schoolhouses in
which he taught, although not occupying their original sites, have been
restored, and are in possession of patriotic societies.
To-day Yale, endowed with buildings costing millions, is learning that
stone and mortar, in edifices however beautiful, do not enshrine their
noblest memories.
Through a few friends of Yale, a statue of Nathan Hale by Bela Lyon
Pratt has recently been placed near the oldest college building,
Connecticut Hall. This building has been restored to the appearance it
bore when Nathan Hale dwelt therein. Who shall say that the statue of
the bound boy, facing death so manfully, will not prove one of Yale's
noblest endowments?
Still another beautiful statue of Nathan Hale by William Ordway
Partridge may be seen in the city of St. Paul, Minn.
Happily, Nathan Hale's ability to die for his country is but one side of
a Yale shield from which gleam the names of hundreds of her sons, who,
doubtless as ready to die for their country as he, had they been in his
place, have proved their power to live for God and for their native
land. Everywhere, in all quarters of the world, the Nathan Hale spirit
of unselfish devotion has inspired the sons of Yale to the noblest
service they could render; and every man, young or old, who passes the
statue of Nathan Hale will realize that hosts have lived lives inspired
by the same splendid spirit.
Nathan Hale himself went forth from his alma mater filled with the
joyous hopes and ambitions that have filled the souls of many other men,
all unconscious of the fact that the finest heroism and the highest
self-sacrifice lay just before him, but conscious that he meant to be
ready for the best that life could give him. He was ready; and the best
of life for him was the power to die as he died.