Classic Poem

LET the sad drums mutter low,
And the serried ranks move slow,
And the thousand hearts beat hushed along the street;
For a mighty heart is still,
And a great, unconquered will
Hath passed to meet the conqueror all must meet.

Outworn without assoil
From a great life's lengthened toil,
Laurelled with a half a century's fame;
From the care and adulation
To the heart-throb of the nation
He hath passed to be a memory and a name.

With banners draped and furled,
'Mid the sorrow of a world,
We lay him down with fitting pomp and state;
With slumber in his breast,
To his long, eternal rest
We lay him down, this man who made us great.

Him of the wider vision,
Who had one hope, elysian,
To mould a mighty empire toward the west:
Who through the hostile years,
'Mid the wrangling words, like spears,
Still bore this titan vision in his breast.

God gave this highest honor
To the nation, that upon her
He was spared to lay the magic of his hand;
Then to live to see the greatness
Of his noble work's completeness,
Then to pass to rest beloved by his land.

We stand at death's dim gates
Where his mighty soul awaits
Somewhere the long, long silence of the years.
And the marble of his lips
Doth all our woe eclipse,
Death's awful peace rolls back upon our tears.

Greater than all sorrow
That our hearts can borrow,
Loftier than our fleeting, human praise;
He hath calmness, great and grim,
That death hath granted him,
The wisest and the mightiest of our days.

Let the sad drums mutter low,
And the serried ranks move slow,
And the thousand hearts beat hushed along the street:
For a mighty heart is still,
And a great, unconquered will
Hath passed to meet the conqueror all must meet.