Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing, Is lying so low? O my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish, That the hand which reached out of the darkness Hath taken the whole; Yea, the arm and the head of the people, The heart and the soul? And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence A nation has wept; Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest, A man ever kept. Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields, Every faint, feeble cry which oppression In her furnace, the centuries had welded Their fetter and chain; And like withes, in the hands of his purpose, He snapped them in twain. Who can be what he was to the people, What he was to the State? Shall the ages bring to us another As good and as great? Our hearts with their anguish are broken, Our wet eyes are dim; For us is the loss and the sorrow, The triumph for him! For, ere this, face to face with his Father Our martyr hath stood; Giving into his hand a white record, With its great seal of blood! PHOEBE CARY. TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN. In the hour of his great work done, President Lincoln has fallen. Not, indeed, in the flush of triumph, for no thought of triumph was in that honest and humble heart, nor in the intoxication of applause, for the fruits of victory were not yet gathered in his hand, was the Chief of the American people, the foremost man in the great Christian revolution of our age, struck down. But his task was, nevertheless, accomplished, and the battle of his life was won. So he passes away from the heat and the toil that still have to be endured, full of the honor that belongs to one who has nobly done his part, and carrying in his last thoughts the sense of deep, steadfast thankfulness that he now could see the assured coming of that end for which he had so long striven in faith and hope. In all time to come, not among Americans only, but among all who think of manhood as more than rank, and set worth above display, the name of Abraham Lincoln will be held in reverence. Rising from among the poorest of the people, winning his slow way upward by sheer hard work, preserving in every successive stage a character unspotted and a name untainted, securing a wider respect as he became better known, never pretending to more than he was, nor being less than he professed himself, he was at length, for very singleness of heart and uprightness of conduct, because all felt that they could trust him utterly, and would desire to be guided by his firmness, courage, and sense, placed in the chair of President at the turning-point of his nation's history. A life so true, rewarded by a dignity so majestic, was defense enough against the petty shafts of malice which party spirit, violent enough to light a civil war, aimed against him. The lowly callings he had first pursued, became his titles to greater respect among those whose respect was worth having; the little external rusticities only showed more brightly, as the rough matrix the golden ore, the true dignity of his nature. Never was any one, set in such high place, and surrounded with so many motives of furious detraction, so little impeached of aught blameworthy. The bitterest enemy could find no more to lay to his charge than that his language was sometimes too homely for a supersensitive taste, or that he conveyed in a jesting phrase what they deemed more suited for a statelier style. But against these specks, what thorough nobility have we not to set? A purity of thought, word, and deed never challenged, a disinterestedness never suspected, an honesty of purpose never impugned, a gentleness and tenderness that never made a private enemy or alienated a friend-these are indeed qualities which may well make a nation mourn. But he had intellect as well as goodness. Cautiously conservative, fearing to pass the limits of established systems, seeking the needful amendments rather from growth than alteration, he proved himself in the crisis the very man best suited for his post. -London Daily News, April 27, 1865. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, Who, in the fear of God, didst bear In sorrow by thy bier we stand, And speak the anguish of a land Thy task is done; the bond are free: Copyrighted, 1883, by D. Appleton & Co. Pure was thy life; its bloody close Hath placed thee with the sons of light, Who perished in the cause of Right. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. LETTER TO THE WORKINGMEN OF MANCHESTER, ENGLAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 1863. TO THE WORKINGMEN OF MANCHESTER:—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the new year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election to preside in the Government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the measures of administration which have been and to all which will hereafter be pursued. Under our frame of government and my official oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict |