The Wonderful Story of Lincoln Part 15

"Here, Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead.

"My Captain does not answer me, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anch.o.r.ed safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.

"Exult, O sh.o.r.es, and ring, O bells!

But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck, my Captain lies, Fallen, cold and dead."

William Cullen Bryant wrote the ode for the funeral services held in New York City. Two of the stanzas are as follows:

"In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that husheth all, And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall.

"Pure was thy life; its b.l.o.o.d.y close Has placed thee with the Sons of Light, Among the n.o.ble hearts of those Who perished in the cause of Right."

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote for the funeral services at Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, a poem of which the following is the last stanza:

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

II. THE TIME WHEN "THOSE WHO CAME TO SCOFF REMAINED TO PRAY"

Lincoln's death was received throughout the South generally as the death of an enemy. Well do they know now that it could have been said of them then, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The sorrow throughout the North was as in the midst of Egypt's ancient woe. It was as if "There was not a house where there was not one dead."

As was once said of a great martyr of liberty, slain three centuries before, so it could be said of Lincoln, "He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face.

While he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets."

Periodicals that had ridiculed him from his first appearance in their view, and that had caused many of their readers to believe him little better than a clown in the arena of affairs, or than a court fool before the nations, dropped their defaming caricatures of him, and gave him nearer justice.

One of the most belittling and besmirching periodicals of England against Lincoln was the "London Punch." The war-president of the United States was, largely from this source of authority, the jest of all Europe.

But the issue following the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln contained a great picture. It was symbolical of England laying a wreath of flowers upon Lincoln's coffin. The picture was drawn by Tenniel and with it was a most penitent poem by Tom Taylor, who was author of the play, "Our American Cousin," which Lincoln was attending when a.s.sa.s.sinated. Five of the expressive stanzas are as follows:

"So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it; four long suffering years, Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through, And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers;

"The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood: Till, as he came to light, from darkling days, And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

"A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger pressed,-- And those perplexed and patient eyes grew dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

"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, Say, scurril jester, is there room for you?

"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."

In 1879, at an unveiling in Boston of Freedman's Memorial Statue, a duplicate of the original in Lincoln Square, Washington, a poem was read from Whittier, of which the last three stanzas are the most significant in their characterization. It beautifully expresses the faith that in righteousness is personal power, even as it also "exalteth a nation."

"We rest in peace where these sad eyes Saw peril, strife and pain; His was the nation's sacrifice, And ours the priceless gain.

"O, symbol of G.o.d's will on earth As it is done above!

Bear witness to the cost and worth Of justice and of love.

"Stand in thy place and testify To coming ages long, That truth is stronger than a lie, And righteousness than wrong."

III. SOME TYPICAL EXAMPLES GIVING VIEWS OF LINCOLN'S LIFE

Vachel Lindsay invokes the spirit of American patriotism when he says,

"Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all, That which is gendered in the wilderness, From lonely prairies and G.o.d's tenderness.

Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream, Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream, Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave, About that breast of earth and prairie-fire-- Fire that freed the slave."

Herr Loewes in the Prussian Parliament said: "Mr. Lincoln performed his duties without pomp or ceremony, and relied on that dignity of the inner self alone, which is far above rank, orders and t.i.tles. He was a faithful servant, not less of his own country than of civilization, freedom and humanity."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing of Lincoln's death, said:

"Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold, This martyr generation, Which Thou, through trials manifold, Art showing Thy salvation!

O let the blood by murder spilt Wash out Thy stricken children's guilt, And sanctify our nation!"

Samuel Francis Smith, author of the national hymn, "America," in a long poetic tribute wrote:

"Grandly he loved and lived; Not his own age alone Bears the proud impress of his sovereign mind.

Down the long march of history, Ages and men shall see What one great soul can be What one great soul can do To make a nation true."

Horace Fiske closed a poem inspired by the Saint Gaudens statue, as follows:

"In human strength he towers almost divine, His mighty shoulders bent with breaking care, His thought-worn face with sympathies grown fine: And as men gaze, their hearts as oft declare That this is he whom all their hearts enshrine---- This man that saved a race from slow despair."

Theodore Roosevelt said, in an address on the character of Lincoln, "One of his most wonderful characteristics was the extraordinary way in which he could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong, and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from whom he differed."

Woodrow Wilson said, "There was no point at which life touched him that he did not speak back to it instantly its meaning."

Sir Spencer Walpole says in his history, "Of all men born to the Anglo-Saxon race in the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln deserves the highest place in history."

IV. REMEMBRANCE AT THE END OF A HUNDRED YEARS

The centennial anniversary of Lincoln's birth called forth expressions of appreciation from over all the world. His memory and his meaning had not grown dim in the interests of humanity. A few typical examples ill.u.s.trate the love and reverence inspired by his great work in the human cause.

James Oppenheim, in his poem in praise of the Lincoln child, says,

"Oh, to pour our love through deeds---- To be as Lincoln was!

That all the land might fill its daily needs Glorified by a human cause!

Then were America a vast World-Torch Flaming a faith across the dying earth, Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch That a New World was struggling at the Birth!"

James Whitcomb Riley, writing of Lincoln, the boy, says in the last stanza:

"Or thus we know, nor doubt it not, The boy he must have been Whose budding heart bloomed with the thought All men are kith and kin---- With love-light in his eyes and shade Of prescient tears: Because Only of such a boy were made The loving man he was."