Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday Part 9

Crown his blood-stained pillow With a victor's palm; Life's receding billow Leaves eternal calm.

At the feet Almighty Lay this gift sincere; Of a purpose weighty, And a record clear.

With deliverance freighted Was this pa.s.sive hand, And this heart, high-fated, Would with love command.

Let him rest serenely In a Nation's care, Where her waters queenly Make the West more fair.

In the greenest meadow That the prairies show, Let his marble's shadow Give all men to know:

"Our First Hero, living, Made his country free; Heed the Second's giving, Death for Liberty."

THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN[12]

BY WALT WHITMAN

Thus ended the attempted secession of these States; thus the four years' war. But the main things come subtly and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward--neither military, political, nor (great as those are), historical. I say, certain secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of this death, are, in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murder itself. Not that Mr. Lincoln strings the princ.i.p.al points and personages of the period, like beads, upon the single string of his career. Not that his idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance and disappearance, stamps this Republic with a stamp more mark'd and enduring than any yet given by any one man--(more even than Was.h.i.+ngton's)--but, join'd with these, the immeasurable value and meaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me, in senses finally dearest to a nation (and here all our own)--the imaginative and artistic senses--the literary and dramatic ones. Not in any common or low meaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the race, and to every age. A long and varied series of contradictory events arrives at last at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the secession period comes to a head, and is gather'd in one brief flash of lightning-illumination--one simple, fierce deed. Its sharp culmination, and as it were solution, of so many b.l.o.o.d.y and angry problems, ill.u.s.trates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other, suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than fiction. Fit radiation--fit close! How the imagination--how the student loves these things! America, too, is to have them. For not in all great deaths, nor far or near--not Caesar in the Roman senate-house, nor Napoleon pa.s.sing away in the wild night-storm at St. Helena--not Paleologus, falling, desperately fighting, piled over dozens deep with Grecian corpses--not calm old Socrates, drinking the hemlock--outvies that terminus of the secession war, in one man's life, here in our midst, in our own time--that seal of the emanc.i.p.ation of three million slaves--that parturition and delivery of our at last really free Republic, born again, henceforth to commence its career of genuine h.o.m.ogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself.

[12] _By permission of David McKay._

OUR SUN HATH GONE DOWN[13]

BY PHOEBE CARY

Our sun hath gone down at the noonday, The heavens are black; And over the morning the shadows Of night-time are back.

Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon, Hush the mirth and the shout;-- G.o.d is G.o.d! and the ways of Jehovah Are past finding out.

Lo! the beautiful feet on the mountains, That yesterday stood; The white feet that came with glad tidings, Are dabbled in blood.

The Nation that firmly was settling The crown on her head, Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, And watches her dead.

Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing, Is lying so low?

O, my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish, Do you feel, do you know,

That the hand which reached out of the darkness Hath taken the whole?

Yea, the arm and the head of the people-- The heart and the soul!

And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence A nation has wept; Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest, A man ever kept!

Once this good man, we mourn, overwearied, Worn, anxious, oppressed, Was going out from his audience chamber For a season to rest;

Unheeding the thousands who waited To honor and greet, When the cry of a child smote upon him, And turned back his feet.

"Three days hath a woman been waiting,"

Said they, "patient and meek."

And he answered, "Whatever her errand, Let me hear; let her speak!"

So she came, and stood trembling before him, And pleaded her cause; Told him all; how her child's erring father Had broken the laws.

Humbly spake she: "I mourn for his folly, His weakness, his fall"; Proudly spake she: "he is not a TRAITOR, And I love him through all!"

Then the great man, whose heart had been shaken By a little babe's cry; Answered soft, taking counsel of mercy, "This man shall not die!"

Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields, The dark holds of s.h.i.+ps; Every faint, feeble cry which oppression Smothered down on men's lips.

In her furnace, the centuries had welded Their fetter and chain; And like withes, in the hands of his purpose, He snapped them in twain.

Who can be what he was to the people; What he was to the State?

Shall the ages bring to us another As good, and as great?

Our hearts with their anguish are broken, Our wet eyes are dim; For us is the loss and the sorrow, The triumph for him!

For, ere this, face to face with his Father Our Martyr hath stood; Giving unto his hand the white record, With its great seal of blood!

[13] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

TOLLING[14]

(April 15, 1865)

BY LUCY LARCOM

Tolling, tolling, tolling!

All the bells of the land!

Lo, the patriot martyr Taketh his journey grand!

Travels into the ages, Bearing a hope how dear!

Into life's unknown vistas, Liberty's great pioneer.

Tolling, tolling, tolling!

See, they come as a cloud, Hearts of a mighty people, Bearing his pall and shroud; Lifting up, like a banner, Signals of loss and woe; Wonder of breathless nations, Moveth the solemn show.

Tolling, tolling, tolling!

Was it, O man beloved, Was it thy funeral only Over the land that moved?

Veiled by that hour of anguish, Borne with the rebel rout, Forth into utter darkness, Slavery's curse went out.

[14] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[15]

"Strangulatus Pro Republica"

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE

Hundreds there have been, loftier than their kind, Heroes and victors in the world's great wars: Hundreds, exalted as the eternal stars, By the great heart, or keen and mighty mind; There have been sufferers, maimed and halt and blind, Who bore their woes in such triumphant calm That G.o.d hath crowned them with the martyr's palm; And there were those who fought through fire to find Their Master's face, and were by fire refined.

But who like thee, oh Sire! hath ever stood Steadfast for truth and right, when lies and wrong Rolled their dark waters, turbulent and strong; Who bore reviling, baseness, tears and blood Poured out like water, till thine own was spent, Then reaped Earth's sole reward--a grave and monument!