IX.

POEMS.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN-AN HORATIAN ODE.

BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

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:
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,

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

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!

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-
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,
But spared, with us, till now,

Each laurelled Cesar's brow!

No Cesar he, whom we lament,
A Man without a precedent,

Sent, it would seem, to do
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:

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,
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-

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,

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!

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
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?
(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,

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 !

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,
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,

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.

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?

Ay! 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.
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,
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

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!

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,
And, lacking prescience, went without;
Often appeared to halt,

And was, of course, at fault:

Heard all opinions, nothing loth,
And loving both sides; angered both:
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-
But he preserved the State!