XVI

Passing the visions, passing the night,

Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,

Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying everaltering song,

As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,

Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,

Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heav

ens,

As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from re

cesses,

Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning with spring.

I cease from my song for thee,

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,

O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,

The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,

With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,

For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands -and this for his dear sake,

Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,

There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Levi Lewis Hager

(February 12th, 1900)

THIS day, upon the scroll of fame,
We venerate anew his name

Who healed the wound by brothers made,
When hostile armies did invade.

He fell a martyr for his land,

Struck down by the assassin's hand;
But rose immortal, like the star
Which sends its radiance from afar.

His praises for the jubilee

Which did a race from bondage free,
Will from that people ever rise,

Like holy incense, to the skies.

The nation great, united now,

With heads and hearts do grateful bow

To do him homage-let it be
The tribute of his country, free.

ACCOMPLICES

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

(Virginia, 1865)

THE Soft new grass is creeping o'er the graves
By the Potomac; and the crisp ground-flower
Lifts its blue cup to catch the passing shower;
The pine-cone ripens, and the long moss waves
Its tangled gonfalons above our braves.

Hark, what a burst of music from yon wood!
The Southern nightingale, above its brood,
In its melodious summer madness raves.
Ah, with what delicate touches of her hand,
With what sweet voices, Nature seeks to screen
The awful Crime of this distracted land,—

Sets her birds singing, while she spreads her green Mantle of velvet where the Murdered lie, As if to hide the horror from God's eye!

THE BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN

Mary A. Leavitt

FROM the tints and the tones of other years,
From the bloom of the Far Away,
What chaplets grateful Memory weaves
On this anniversary day!

How we hear the tramp of marching feet
And the call of the bugle blast;

And the glad acclaim as the troops come home,
When the terrible war is past!

In the midst of joy, we hear the toll-
The toll of a funeral bell!

From around the globe comes a wail of woe
That blends in one funeral knell!

Joy is struck dead by a crushing blow!
The nation's deliverer slain!

No wonder each heart is whelmed in grief
And each wind bears a sob of pain!

Hallow his tomb, O Illinois!

Still sacred keep that shrine

Where love would twine immortal wreaths,
And blend her gifts with thine.

O peerless Leader! but prized too late!
Strange tear-dimmed eyes now see it all!
Abused by foes, misknown by friends-
Too late, too late, our praises fall!

LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

Ida Vose Woodbury

AGAIN thy birthday dawns, O man beloved,
Dawns on the land thy blood was shed to save,
And hearts of millions, by one impulse moved,
Bow and fresh laurels lay upon thy grave.

The years but add new luster to thy glory,

And watchmen on the heights of vision see

Reflected in thy life the old, old story,

The story of the Man of Galilee.

We see in thee the image of Him kneeling

Before the close-shut tomb, and at the word "Come forth," from out the blackness long concealing There rose a man; clearly again was heard

The Master's voice, and then, his cerements broken, Friends of the dead a living brother see;

Thou, at the tomb where millions lay, hast spoken: "Loose him and let him go!"—the slave was free.

And in the man so long in thraldom hidden
We see the likeness of the Father's face,
Clod changed to soul; by thy atonement bidden,
We hasten to the uplift of a race.

Spirit of Lincoln! Summon all thy loyal;

Nerve them to follow where thy feet have trod, To prove, by voice as clear and deed as royal, Man's brotherhood in our one Father-God.

LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

Nathan Haskell Dole

(February 12th, 1809)

AS BACK we look across the ages

A few great figures meet the eye—
Kings, prophets, warriors, poets, sages—
Whose names and deeds will never die.

The rest are all forgotten, perished,
Like trees in trackless forests vast,

But those whose memory men have cherished
Seem living still and have no past.