Abraham Lincoln

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Title: Abraham Lincoln.
An Horatian Ode.
Author: Richard Henry Stoddard
Release Date: June 13, 2006 [EBook #18573]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ***
Produced by The University of Michigan's Making of America?online book collection (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa/).
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
An Horatian Ode.
By Richard Henry Stoddard.
New York:
Bunce & Huntington, Publishers,
540 Broadway.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,
By BUNCE & HUNTINGTON,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Alvord, Printer.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
Born, Feb. 12th, 1809.
Assassinated, Good-Friday, April 14th, 1865.
"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!?Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope?The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence?The life o' the building.

"Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight?With a new Gorgon:--Do not bid me speak;?See, and then speak yourselves.--Awake! awake!?Ring the alarum-bell:--Murder! and treason!

"Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,?And look on death itself!--up, up, and see?The great doom's image!

"Our royal master's murdered!

"Had I but died an hour before this chance,?I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant?There's nothing serious in mortality:?All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;?The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees?Is left this vault to brag of.
? * *
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;?Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,?Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,?Can touch him further."
Macbeth.
Not as when some great Captain falls?In battle, where his Country calls,
Beyond the struggling lines?That push his dread designs
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 Cesar's brow!
No Cesar he, whom we lament,?A Man without a precedent,
Sent, it would see, to do?His work--and perish too!
Not by the weary cares of State,?The endless tasks, which will not wait,
Which, often done in vain,?Must yet be done again:
Not in the dark, wild tide of War,?Which rose so high, and rolled so far,
Sweeping from sea to sea?In awful anarchy:--
Four fateful years of mortal strife,?Which slowly drained the Nation's life,
(Yet, for each drop that ran?There sprang an armed man!)
Not then;--but when by measures meet,--?By victory, and by defeat,--
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??These multitudes of solemn men,
Who speak not when they meet,?But throng the silent street?
The flags half-mast, that late so high?Flaunted at each new victory?
(The stars no brightness shed,?But bloody looks the red!)
The black festoons that stretch for miles,?And turn the streets to funeral aisles?
(No house too poor to show?The Nation's badge of woe!)
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,?And Good hath followed--May it now!
(God lets bad instruments?Produce the best events.)
But he, the Man we mourn to-day,?No tyrant was: so mild a sway
In one such weight who bore?Was never known before!
Cool should he be, of balanced powers,?The Ruler of a Race like ours,
Impatient, headstrong, wild,--?The Man to guide the Child!
And this _he_ was, who most unfit?(So hard the sense of God to hit!)
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?The proudest in the purple born,
Whose wisdom never grew?To what, untaught, he knew--
The People, of whom he was one.?No gentleman like Washington,--
(Whose bones, methinks, make room,?To have him in their tomb!)
A laboring man, with horny hands,?Who swung the axe, who tilled his lands,
Who shrank from nothing new,?But did as poor men do!
One of the People! Born to be?Their curious