IX. POEMS. ABRAHAM LINCOLN-AN HORATIAN ODE. BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. Not as when some great Captain falls That push his dread designs To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: Of his determined men, Who must be victors then! Nor as when sink the civic Great, Whose calm, mature, wise words With no such tears as e'er were shed 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,- That waits-what is to come! Not more astounded had we been We woke to find a mourning Earth- Such thunderbolts, in other lands, Each laurelled Cesar's brow! No Cesar he, whom we lament, Sent, it would seem, to do Not by the weary cares of State, Not in the dark, wild tide of War, In awful anarchy: Four fateful years of mortal strife, Not then;-but when by measures meet,— 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? Who speak not when they meet, The flags half-mast, that late so high (The stars no brightness shed, The black festoons that stretch for miles, 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, But he, the Man we mourn to-day, Cool should he be, of balanced powers, Impatient, headstrong, wild,— And this he was, who most unfit 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 To what, untaught, he knew The People, of whom he was one. (Whose bones, methinks, make room, A laboring man, with horny hands, But did as poor men do! One of the People! Born to be To share, yet rise above Their shifting hate and love. Common his mind (it seemed so then), No hasty fool, of stubborn will, Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt, And was, of course, at fault: Heard all opinions, nothing loth, No hero, this, of Roman mould; |