Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.

April 15

Abraham Lincoln

By Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903)

NOT as when some great Captain falls,

In battle, when 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 Cæsar’s brow.

No Cæsar 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 arméd 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, 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?

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,

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

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,

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!

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,

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,

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—

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.

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,

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,

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

Of that Paternal Soul.