Elegy

Not much needs to be said that the half-mast flags don’t already say.

I offer a selection from Archibald MacLeish’s 1948 poem, “Brave New World” for reflection and consideration.  In addition to a poet, MacLeish was a journalist, Assisstant Secretary of State, and Librarian of Congress.  He was not an ivory tower wordsmith.

But you, Thomas Jefferson,

You could not lie so still,

You could not bear the weight of stone

On the quiet hill,

You could not keep your green grown peace

Nor hold your folded hand

If you could see your new world now,

Your new sweet land.

There was a time, Tom Jefferson,

When freedom made free men.

The new found earth and the new freed mind

Were brothers then.

There was a time when tyrants feared

The new world of the free.

Now freedom is afraid and shrieks

At tyranny.

Words have not changed their sense so soon

Nor tyranny grown new.

The truths you held, Tom Jefferson,

Will still hold true.

What’s changed is freedom in this age.

What great men dared to choose

Sall men now dare neither win

Nor lose.

Freedom, when men fear freedom’s use

But love its useful name,

Has cause and cause enough for fear

And cause for shame.

We fought a war in freedom’s name

And won it in our own.

We fought to free a world and raised

A wall of stone.

Your countrymen who could have built

The hill fires of the free

To set the dry world all ablaze

With liberty–

Your countrymen who could have hurled

Their freedom like a brand

Have cupped it to a candle spark

In a frightened hand.

Freedom that was a thing to use

They’ve made a thing to save

And staked it in and fenced it round

Like a dead man’s grave.

You, Thomas Jefferson,

You could not lie so still,

You could not bear the weight of stone

On your green hill,

You could not hold your angry tongue

If you could see how bold

The old stale bitter world plays new–

And the new world old.