| |
| NOT as when some great Captain falls | |
| In battle, where his Country calls, | |
| Beyond the struggling lines | |
| That push his dread designs | |
| |
| To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: | 5 |
| Or, in the last charge, at the head | |
| Of his determined men, | |
| Who must be victors then. | |
| |
| Nor as when sink the civic great, | |
| The safer pillars of the State, | 10 |
| Whose calm, mature, wise words | |
| Suppress the need of swords. | |
| |
| With no such tears as e’er were shed | |
| Above the noblest of our dead | |
| Do we to-day deplore | 15 |
| The Man that is no more. | |
| |
| Our sorrow hath a wider scope, | |
| Too strange for fear, too vast for hope, | |
| A wonder, blind and dumb, | |
| That waits—what is to come! | 20 |
| |
| Not more astounded had we been | |
| If Madness, that dark night, unseen, | |
| Had in our chambers crept, | |
| And murdered while we slept! | |
| |
| We woke to find a mourning earth, | 25 |
| Our Lares shivered on the hearth, | |
| The roof-tree fallen, all | |
| That could affright, appall! | |
| |
| Such thunderbolts, in other lands, | |
| Have smitten the rod from royal hands, | 30 |
| But spared, with us, till now, | |
| Each laurelled Caesar’s brow. | |
| |
| No Caesar he whom we lament, | |
| A Man without a precedent, | |
| Sent, it would seem, to do | 35 |
| His work, and perish, too. | |
| |
| Not by the weary cares of State, | |
| The endless tasks, which will not wait, | |
| Which, often done in vain, | |
| Must yet be done again: | 40 |
| |
| Not in the dark, wild tide of war, | |
| Which rose so high, and rolled so far, | |
| Sweeping from sea to sea | |
| In awful anarchy: | |
| |
| Four fateful years of mortal strife, | 45 |
| Which slowly drained the nation’s life, | |
| (Yet for each drop that ran | |
| There sprang an armed man!) | |
| |
| Not then; but when, by measures meet, | |
| By victory, and by defeat, | 50 |
| By courage, patience, skill, | |
| The people’s fixed “We will!” | |
| |
| Had pierced, had crushed Rebellion dead, | |
| Without a hand, without a head, | |
| At last, when all was well, | 55 |
| He fell, O how he fell! | |
| |
| The time, the place, the stealing shape, | |
| The coward shot, the swift escape, | |
| The wife—the widow’s scream,— | |
| It is a hideous Dream! | 60 |
| |
| A dream? What means this pageant, then? | |
| These multitudes of solemn men, | |
| Who speak not when they meet, | |
| But throng the silent street? | |
| |
| The flags half-mast that late so high | 65 |
| Flaunted at each new victory? | |
| (The stars no brightness shed, | |
| But bloody looks the red!) | |
| |
| The black festoons that stretch for miles, | |
| And turn the streets to funeral aisles? | 70 |
| (No house too poor to show | |
| The nation’s badge of woe. | |
| |
| The cannon’s sudden, sullen boom, | |
| The bells that toll of death and doom, | |
| The rolling of the drums, | 75 |
| The dreadful car that comes? | |
| |
| Cursed be the hand that fired the shot, | |
| The frenzied brain that hatched the plot, | |
| Thy country’s Father slain | |
| By thee, thou worse than Cain! | 80 |
| |
| Tyrants have fallen by such as thou, | |
| And good hath followed—may it now! | |
| (God lets bad instruments | |
| Produce the best events.) | |
| |
| But he, the man we mourn to-day, | 85 |
| No tyrant was: so mild a sway | |
| In one such weight who bore | |
| Was never known before. | |
| |
| Cool should he be, of balanced powers, | |
| The ruler of a race like ours, | 90 |
| Impatient, headstrong, wild, | |
| The Man to guide the Child. | |
| |
| And this he was, who most unfit | |
| (So hard the sense of God to hit,) | |
| Did seem to fill his place; | 95 |
| With such a homely face, | |
| |
| Such rustic manners, speech uncouth, | |
| (That somehow blundered out the truth,) | |
| Untried, untrained to bear | |
| The more than kingly care. | 100 |
| |
| Ah! And his genius put to scorn | |
| The proudest in the purple born, | |
| Whose wisdom never grew | |
| To what, untaught, he knew, | |
| |
| The People, of whom he was one: | 105 |
| No gentleman, like Washington, | |
| (Whose bones, methinks, make room, | |
| To have him in their tomb!) | |
| |
| A laboring man, with horny hands, | |
| Who swung the axe, who tilled his lands, | 110 |
| Who shrank from nothing new, | |
| But did as poor men do. | |
| |
| One of the People! Born to be | |
| Their curious epitome; | |
| To share yet rise above | 115 |
| Their shifting hate and love. | |
| |
| Common his mind, (it seemed so then,) | |
| His thoughts the thoughts of other men: | |
| Plain were his words, and poor, | |
| But now they will endure! | 120 |
| |
| No hasty fool, of stubborn will, | |
| But prudent, cautious, pliant still; | |
| Who since his work was good | |
| Would do it as he could. | |
| |
| Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt, | 125 |
| And, lacking prescience, went without: | |
| Often appeared to halt, | |
| And was, of course, at fault; | |
| |
| Heard all opinions, nothing loath, | |
| And, loving both sides, angered both: | 130 |
| Was—not like Justice, blind, | |
| But watchful, clement, kind. | |
| |
| No hero this of Roman mould, | |
| Nor like our stately sires of old: | |
| Perhaps he was not great, | 135 |
| But he preserved the State! | |
| |
| O honest face, which all men knew! | |
| O tender heart, but known to few! | |
| O wonder of the age, | |
| Cut off by tragic rage! | 140 |
| |
| Peace! Let the long procession come, | |
| For hark, the mournful, muffled drum, | |
| The trumpet’s wail afar, | |
| And see, the awful car! | |
| |
| Peace! Let the sad procession go, | 145 |
| While cannon boom and bells toll slow. | |
| And go, thou sacred car, | |
| Bearing our woe afar! | |
| |
| Go, darkly borne, from State to State, | |
| Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait | 150 |
| To honor all they can | |
| The dust of that good man. | |
| |
| Go, grandly borne, with such a train | |
| As greatest kings might die to gain. | |
| The just, the wise, the brave, | 155 |
| Attend thee to the grave. | |
| |
| And you, the soldiers of our wars, | |
| Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars, | |
| Salute him once again, | |
| Your late commander—slain! | 160 |
| |
| Yes, let your tears indignant fall, | |
| But leave your muskets on the wall; | |
| Your country needs you now | |
| Beside the forge—the plough. | |
| |
| (When Justice shall unsheathe her brand,— | 165 |
| If Mercy may not stay her hand, | |
| Nor would we have it so,— | |
| She must direct the blow.) | |
| |
| And you, amid the master-race, | |
| Who seem so strangely out of place, | 170 |
| Know ye who cometh? He | |
| Who hath declared ye free. | |
| |
| Bow while the body passes—nay, | |
| Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray! | |
| Weep, weep—I would ye might— | 175 |
| Your poor black faces white! | |
| |
| And, children, you must come in bands, | |
| With garlands in your little hands, | |
| Of blue and white and red, | |
| To strew before the dead. | 180 |
| |
| So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes | |
| The Fallen to his last repose. | |
| Beneath no mighty dome, | |
| But in his modest home; | |
| |
| The churchyard where his children rest, | 185 |
| The quiet spot that suits him best, | |
| There shall his grave be made, | |
| And there his bones be laid. | |
| |
| And there his countrymen shall come, | |
| With memory proud, with pity dumb, | 190 |
| And strangers far and near, | |
| For many and many a year. | |
| |
| For many a year and many an age, | |
| While History on her ample page | |
| The virtues shall enroll | 195 |
| Of that Paternal Soul. | |
| |
