Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do,

And lived to do it: four long suffering years' Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,

And took both with the same unwavering mood; Till, as he came on light from darkling days,

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him,

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips,

Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high:
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt

If more of horror or disgrace they bore;

But thy foul crime, like CAIN's, stands darkly out.

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven;
And with the martyr's crown crownest a life
With much to praise, little to be forgiven!

London Punch.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

INSCRIBED TO THE LONDON PUNCH, BY ALICE CARY.

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No glittering chaplet brought from other lands!
As in his life, this man, in death, is ours;
His own loved prairies o'er his "gaunt gnarled hands
Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers!

What need hath he now of a tardy crown,

His name from mocking jest and sneer to save?
When every ploughman turns his furrow down
As soft as though it fell upon his grave.

He was a man whose like the world again

Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise; The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign, Are battles, not the pomps of gala-days!

The grandest leader of the grandest war
That ever time in history gave a place,
What were the tinsel flattery of a star

To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace!

'Tis to th' mau, and th' man's honest worth,
The nation's loyalty in tears upsprings ;
Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth,
High o'er the silken broideries of kings.

The mechanism of external forms—

The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through Were alien ways to him: his brawny arms

Had other work than posturing to do!

Born of the people, well he knew to grasp

The wants and wishes of the weak and small; Therefore we hold him with no shadowy clasp, Therefore his name is household to us all.

---

Therefore we love him with a love apart
From any fawning love of pedigree:
His was the royal soul and mind and heart, -
Not the poor outward shows of royalty.

Forgive us, then, O friends, if we are slow
To meet your recognition of his worth:
We're jealous of the very tears that flow
From eyes that never loved a humble hearth.

IN STATE.

BENEATH the vast and vaulted dome
That copes the Capitol, he lies;
It is a dreary, dreary night:

The stars in their eternal home
Seem like the sad ethereal eyes
Of seraphs, filled with tender light.

The Capitol is wrapt in mist;
Strangely the shadows come and go:
The dome seems floating into air,
Upborne by unseen hands, I wist:
In solemn state he lies below,
His pure hands folded as in prayer.

He lies in solemn state, alone,
Alone, with only silence there,
Alone with lofty lamps that rim

Almost the very coping-stone;
Yet not alone, for all the air

Is filled with tender thoughts of him.

And all night long the marble floors
Have echoed to the gentle tread

AN HORATIAN ODE.

Of blessed and immortal feet;
And through the open corridors
The mighty and illustrious dead

Have thronged all night his face to greet.

And they have bent, full-browed with pain,
And gazed through their celestial tears
Upon the face so dear to them,

Upon the man whose heart was fain
Above all hearts these latter years
To be like His of Bethlehem.

And so our heads are bowed with grief
Because we loved him, and because
But yesterday this great man stood
Of many States the perfect chief,
Dispensing justice and the laws,
And mindful of the public good.

Alas! it is a dreary night;
For he we loved so much now lies
Beneath the vast and vaulted dome;
And in his eyes there is no light, -
No light is in those loving eyes
Which kindliness had made her home.

Harpers' Weckly.

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

275

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,