My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object

won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I with mournful tread

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

WALT WHITMAN.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!

Who in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nation's trust!

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,

Amid the awe that hushes all,

And speak the anguish of a land

That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done; the bond are free:
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be

The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,

Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of Right.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN*

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!

*

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

*From "Poems by Richard Henry Stoddard," copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN*

This man whose homely face you look upon,
Was one of Nature's masterful, great men;
Born with strong arms, that unfought battles won,
Direct of speech, and cunning with the pen.
Chosen for large designs, he had the art
Of winning with his humor, and he went

Straight to his mark, which was the human heart;
Wise, too, for what he could not break he bent.
Upon his back a more than Atlas-load,
The burden of the Commonwealth, was laid;
He stooped, and rose up to it, though the road
Shot suddenly downwards, not a whit dismayed.

Hold, warriors, councillors, kings! All now give place
To this dead Benefactor of the race!

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Some opulent force of genius, soul, and race,
Some deep life-current from far centuries
Flowed to his mind, and lighted his sad eyes,
gave his name, among great names, high place.

And

But these are miracles we may not trace

Nor say why from a source and lineage mean
He rose to grandeur never dreamt or seen,
Or told on the long scroll of history's space.

*From "Poems by Richard Henry Stoddard," copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

The tragic fate of one broad hemisphere
Fell on stern days to his supreme control,
All that the world and liberty held dear

Pressed like a nightmare on his patient soul.
Martyr beloved, on whom, when life was done,
Fame looked, and saw another Washington!

JOEL BENTON.

ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;

That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea

For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men

As might some prophet of the elder day—
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art

Or arméd strength-his pure and mighty heart.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

LINCOLN

From the "Commemoration Ode."

Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote.

For him her Old-World molds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;

These are all gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.