ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Dey say dey will forgive de wrong
And bid him 'pent and go.

Praise de Lord! Praise de Lord!
Dey bid him 'pent and go.

De rice is higher far dis year,
De cotton taller grow;
De lowest corn-silk on de ear
Is higher dan de hoe;
De Lord He lift up ebery ting

'Cept rebel in his grave;

De negro bress de Lord, an' sing

He is no longer slave.

Praise de Lord! Praise de Lord!

De negro no more slave.

Harpers' Weekly.

267

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

ASSASSINATED GOOD FRIDAY, 1865.

BY EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

"FORGIVE them, for they know not what they do!"
He said, and so went shriven to his fate,
Unknowing went, that generous heart and true.
Even while he spoke the slayer lay in wait;
And when the morning opened Heaven's gate
There passed the whitest soul a nation knew.

Henceforth all thoughts of pardon are too late;
They, in whose cause that arm its weapon drew,
Have murdered Mercy. Now alone shall stand
Blind Justice, with the sword unsheathed she wore.
Hark! from the eastern to the western strand,
The swelling thunder of the people's roar,
What words they murmur: Fetter not her hand!
So let it smite: such deeds shall be no more!

April 15, 1865.

New York Tribune.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

O, SLOW to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power- a nation's trust.

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done - the bond are free;
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose noblest monument shall be

The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of right.

Evening Post.

AN end at last!

REUNION.

BY JOHN NICHOL.

The echoes of the war

The weary war beyond the western waves -Die in the distance. Freedom's rising star Beacons above a hundred thousand graves :

The graves of heroes who have won the fight,
Who in the storming of the stubborn town

REUNION.

Have rung the marriage-peal of might and right,
And scaled the cliffs and cast the dragon down.

Let the struggle cease,

The bloody page is turned; the next may be
For ways of pleasantness and paths of peace!"

A golden morn - a dawn of better things -
The olive-branch-clasping of hands again
A noble lesson read to conquering kings —
A sky that tempests had not scoured in vain.

This from America we hoped, and him

Who ruled her "in the spirit of his creed." Does the hope last when all our eyes are dim, As history records her darkest deed?

The pilot of his people through the strife,
With his strong purpose turning scorn to praise,
E'en at the close of battle reft of life,

And fair inheritance of quiet days.

Defeat and triumph found him calm and just;
He showed how clemency should temper power;

And, dying, left to future times in trust

The memory of his brief victorious hour.

O'ermastered by the irony of fate,

The last and greatest martyr of his cause; Slain like Achilles at the Scæan gate,

He saw the end, and fixed "the purer laws."

May these endure, and, as his work, áttest
The glory of his honest heart and hand :
The simplest, and the bravest, and the best, -
The Moses and the Cromwell of his land.

269

Too late the pioneers of modern spite,

Awe-stricken by the universal gloom,
See his name lustrous in Death's sable night,
And offer tardy tribute at his tomb.

But we who have been with him all the while,
Who knew his worth, and loved him long ago,
Rejoice that in the circuit of our isle

There is no room at last for Lincoln's foe.

London Spectator.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

FOULLY ASSASSINATED, APRIL 14, 1865.

You lay a wreath on murdered LINCOLN'S bier,
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,

His lack of all we prize as debonair,

Of power or will to shine, of art to please:

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step, as though the way were plain ; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,

Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain.

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,

Say, scurrile-jester, is there room for you?

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men.

271

My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue,
Noting how to occasion's height he rose;
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, -
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.

How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be, —
How in good fortune and in ill the same:
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work - such work as few

Ever had laid on head and heart and hand

As one who knows, where there's a task to do,

Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command;

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,
That God makes instruments to work His will,

If but that will we can arrive to know,

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle on the side

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied

His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights,

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil;

The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe; The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil;

The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks;

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear,
Such were the needs that helped his youth to train: