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A Horatian Ode
NOT as when some great Captain falls, | |
| In battle, when his country calls, | |
| Beyond the struggling lines | |
| That push his dread designs | |
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| To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: | 5 |
| Or, in the last charge, at the head | |
| Of his determined men, | |
| Who must be victors then. | |
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| Nor as when sink the civic great, | |
| The safer pillars of the State, | 10 |
| Whose calm, mature, wise words | |
| Suppress the need of swords. | |
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| With no such tears as e’er were shed | |
| Above the noblest of our dead | |
| Do we to-day deplore | 15 |
| The Man that is no more. | |
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| 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! | 20 |
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| Not more astounded had we been | |
| If Madness, that dark night, unseen, | |
| Had in our chambers crept, | |
| And murdered while we slept. | |
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| We woke to find a mourning earth, | 25 |
| Our Lares shivered on the hearth, | |
| The roof-tree fallen, all | |
| That could affright, appall! | |
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| Such thunderbolts, in other lands, | |
| Have smitten the rod from royal hands, | 30 |
| But spared, with us, till now, | |
| Each laurelled Cæsar’s brow. | |
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| No Cæsar he whom we lament, | |
| A Man without a precedent, | |
| Sent, it would seem, to do | 35 |
| His work, and perish, too. | |
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| Not by the weary cares of State, | |
| The endless tasks, which will not wait, | |
| Which, often done in vain, | |
| Must yet be done again: | 40 |
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| Not in the dark, wild tide of war, | |
| Which rose so high, and rolled so far, | |
| Sweeping from sea to sea | |
| In awful anarchy: | |
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| Four fateful years of mortal strife, | 45 |
| Which slowly drained the nation’s life, | |
| (Yet for each drop that ran | |
| There sprang an arméd man!) | |
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| Not then; but when, by measures meet, | |
| By victory, and by defeat, | 50 |
| By courage, patience, skill, | |
| The people’s fixed “We will!” | |
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| Had pierced, had crushed Rebellion dead, dead, | |
| Without a hand, without a head, | |
| At last, when all was well, | 55 |
| He fell, O how he fell! | |
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| The time, the place, the stealing shape, | |
| The coward shot, the swift escape, | |
| The wife, the widow’s scream,— | |
| It is a hideous Dream! | 60 |
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| A dream? What means this pageant, then? | |
| These multitudes of solemn men, | |
| Who speak not when they meet, | |
| But throng the silent street? | |
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| The flags half-mast that late so high | 65 |
| Flaunted at each new victory? | |
| (The stars no brightness shed, | |
| But bloody looks the red!) | |
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| The black festoons that stretch for miles, | |
| And turn the streets to funeral aisles? | 70 |
| (No house too poor to show | |
| The nation’s badge of woe.) | |
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| The cannon’s sudden, sullen boom, | |
| The bells that toll of death and doom, | |
| The rolling of the drums, | 75 |
| The dreadful car that comes? * * * * * | |
| Peace! Let the long procession come, | |
| For hark, the mournful muffled drum, | |
| The trumpet’s wail afar, | |
| And see, the awful car! | 80 |
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| Peace! Let the sad procession go, | |
| While cannon boom and bells toll slow, | |
| And go, thou sacred car, | |
| Bearing our woe afar! | |
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| Go. darkly borne, from State to State, | 85 |
| Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait | |
| To honor all they can | |
| The dust of that good man. | |
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| Go, grandly borne, with such a train | |
| As greatest kings might die to gain | 90 |
| The just, the wise, the brave, | |
| Attend thee to the grave. | |
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| And you, the soldiers of our wars, | |
| Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars, | |
| Salute him once again, | 95 |
| Your late commander—slain! | |
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| Yes, let your tears indignant fall, | |
| But leave your muskets on the wall; | |
| Your country needs you now | |
| Beside the forge—the plough. | 100 |
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| (When Justice shall unsheathe her brand, | |
| If Mercy may not stay her hand, | |
| Nor would we have it so, | |
| She must direct the blow.) | |
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| And you, amid the master-race, | 105 |
| Who seem so strangely out of place, | |
| Know ye who cometh? He | |
| Who hath declared ye free. | |
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| Bow while the body passes—nay, | |
| Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray! | 110 |
| Weep, weep—I would ye might— | |
| Your poor black faces white! | |
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| And, children, you must come in bands, | |
| With garlands in your little hands, | |
| Of blue and white and red, | 115 |
| To strew before the dead. | |
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| So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes | |
| The Fallen to his last repose. | |
| Beneath no mighty dome, | |
| But in his modest home; | 120 |
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| 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. | |
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| And there his countrymen shall come, | 125 |
| With memory proud, with pity dumb, | |
| And strangers far and near, | |
| For many and many a year. | |
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| For many a year and many an age, | |
| While History on her ample page | 130 |
| The virtues shall enroll | |
| Of that Paternal Soul. | |
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