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Foully Assassinated April 14, 1865 1
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, | |
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| His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, | 5 |
| 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; | |
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| You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil’s laugh, | |
| Judging each step as though the way were plain, | 10 |
| Reckless, so it could point its paragraph | |
| Of chief’s perplexity, or people’s pain: | |
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| 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, | 15 |
| Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? | |
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| 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. | 20 |
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| My shallow judgment I had learned 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. | |
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| How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be; | 25 |
| How in good fortune and in ill, the same; | |
| Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, | |
| Thirsty for gold nor feverish for fame. | |
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| He went about his work,—such work as few | |
| Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,— | 30 |
| As one who knows, where there ’s a task to do, | |
| Man’s honest will must Heaven’s good grace command: | |
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| 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, | 35 |
| Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. | |
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| 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; | 40 |
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| 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, | |
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| The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear,— | 45 |
| Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: | |
| Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear, | |
| If but their stock be of right girth and grain. | |
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| So he grew up, a destined work to do, | |
| And lived to do it: four long-suffering years’ | 50 |
| Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, | |
| And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, | |
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| 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, | 55 |
| And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, | |
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| A felon hand, between the goal and him, | |
| Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, | |
| And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, | |
| Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest! | 60 |
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| The words of mercy were upon his lips, | |
| 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. | |
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| The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, | 65 |
| 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! | |
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| A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before | |
| By the assassin’s hand, whereof men doubt | 70 |
| If more of horror or disgrace they bore; | |
| But thy foul crime, like Cain’s, stands darkly out. | |
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| Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, | |
| Whate’er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; | |
| And with the martyr’s crown crownest a life | 75 |
| With much to praise, little to be forgiven. | |
