Classic Poem

(Foully Assassinated, April, 1865. Inscribed to Punch)

N O GLITTERING chaplet brought from other lands!
As in his life, this man, in death, is ours;
His own loved prairies o'er his “gaunt gnarled hands”
Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers.

What need hath he now of a tardy crown,
His name from mocking sneer and jest to save?
When every plowman turns his furrow down
As soft as though it fell upon his grave.

He was a man whose like the world again
Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise:
The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign
Are battles, not the pomps of gala-days!

The grandest leader of the grandest war
That ever time in history gave a place;
What were the tinsel flattery of a star
To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace!

'Tis to the man, and the man's honest worth,
The nation's loyalty in tears upsprings;
Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth
High o'er the silken braideries of kings.

The mechanism of external forms—
The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through,
Were alien ways to him—his brawny arms
Had other work than posturing to do!

Born of the people, well he knew to grasp
The wants and wishes of the weak and small;
Therefore we hold him with no shadow clasp—
Therefore his name is household to us all.

Therefore we love him with a love apart
From any fawning love of pedigree—
His was the royal soul and mind and heart—
Not the poor outward shows of royalty.

Forgive us then, O friends, if we are slow
To meet your recognition of his worth—
We're jealous of the very tears that flow
From eyes that never loved a humble hearth.