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!

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

FOULLY ASSASSINATED, APRIL 14, 1865.
(From the London Punch.)

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?

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.

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 temper 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:
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 changed 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 had, between the goal and him,

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

The words of mercy were upon

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.

X.

THE ASSASSIN AND HIS END.

TREASON has done his worst!

A hand accurst

Has made the Nation orphan by a blow:

Has turned its hymns of joy to wail and woe

As for a father lost, a saviour slain,—

And blood, and toil, and anguish spent in vain!

Half his great work was done,
By victory won

O'er recreant chiefs, and rebels in the field,
Compelled to bow the knee and homage yield;
And his calm breast, from war and vengeance turned,
With generous pity towards the vanquished yearned.

Deep joy was in his soul

As o'er it roll

Sweet thoughts of peace and magnanimity,

Wounds healed, wrath quelled, his country free,
Foes turned to friends, the bitter past forgiven;—
Such thoughts as earthly power make like to heaven.

While all suspicion slept,

The assassin crept

Into the circle where, in guardless state,
The simple Chief in friendly converse sate,

And, in an instant, ere a hand could rise,

The Nation's Hope a slaughtered martyr lies!

In peace, great martyr, sleep!
Thy people weep,

But stop their tears to swear upon thy grave
The cause thou died'st for they but live to save;
And the great Bond, cemented by thy blood,
Shall stand unbroken, as it still hath stood.

The traitor's fiendlike act,

By stern campact,

Binds us still closer 'gainst the murderous band
That fain with blood would deluge all the land;
But vanquished by the sword, for mercy kneel,
And pay it, granted, with the assassin's steel.

Oh, for this hellish deed
Thousands shall bleed,

That else had lived to bless thy gentle name
By mercy wreathed with an immortal fame;
And traitors, from a nation's wrath, shall learn
That outraged Pity's tears to sternest justice turn!
Geo. Vandenhoff.