Classic Poem

He comes! But not as once he came,
With beaming eye and brow,
With waving banners, loud acclaim,
Cometh the gifted now.
With sable plumes and funeral train,
With slow and solemn tread,
They bear him to his home again,
Our noble Howard — dead!

Toll, toll for him the mournful knell,
Ye thousands who have hung
Upon the thrilling words that fell
From his entrancing tongue,
Bring flowers, bedewed by many a tear,
Wreathed with the cypress bough,
And lay them on the lowly bier
Where Howard slumbers now.

And ye who sat around his hearth,
Where love's warm pulses beat
In joy and sorrow, care and mirth,
And is it thus ye meet?
Ye have not seen his pleasant face,
His manly form, for years;
He comes — instead of love's embrace,
Ye greet him with your tears.

How shall the minstrel sing of him?
How tell his peerless worth?
She can but say: A star is dim,
A light has passed from earth,
The odor of a flower is spent,
Lost is a music strain;
A tender, holy link is rent.
In fond affection's chain.

But, by the voice of well-earned fame,
By bitter tears that start,
We know " our Howard's " honored name
Lives in his country's heart.
And by the truthful words he said,
The good seed he has sown
Will grow and bloom, though he is dead,
Round Freedom's cornerstone.

His country, faithful to her trust,
Hath sought him where he fell,
To hoard the angel-guarded dust,
Of one she loved so well.
And when the Present, old and gray,
Shall be a by-gone age,
His name shall shine with purest ray
Upon historic page.