Classic Poem

With finger on lip and breath bated,
With an eager and sad desire,
The world stood hushed, as it waited
For the click of the fateful wire.

" Better , " and civilization
Breathed freer and hoped again.
" Worse , " and through every nation
Went throbbing a thrill of pain.

A cry at midnight and, listening,
" Dead! " tolled out the bells of despair;
And millions of eyelids were glistening
As sobbed the sad tones on the air.

But who is he toward whom all eyes are turning?
And who is he for whom all hearts are yearning?

What is the threat at which earth holds its breath
While one lone man a duel fights with death?

No thrones are hanging in suspense,
No kingdoms totter to their fall;
Peace, with her gentle influence,
Is hovering over all.

'Tis just one man at Elberon
Who waiteth day by day,
Whose patience all our hearts has won
As ebbs his life away.

His birthday waked no cannon boom;
No purple round him hung:
A backwoods cabin gave him room,
And storms his welcome sung.

He seized the sceptre of that king
Who treads a freehold sod;
He wore upon his brow that ring
That crowns a son of God.

By his own might he built a throne,
With no unhuman arts,
And by his manhood reigned alone
O'er fifty million hearts.

Thus is humanity's long dream,
Its highest, holiest hope, begun
To harden into fact, and gleam
A city 'neath the sun, —

A city, not like that which came
In old-time vision from the skies,
But wrought by man through blood and flame,
From solid earth to rise, —

Man's city: the ideal reign
Where every human right hath place;
Where blood, nor birth, nor priest again
Shall bind the weary race;

In which no king but man shall be!
'Twas this that thrilled with loving pain
The heart of all the earth, as he
Died by the sobbing main.

For, mightiest ruler of the earth,
He was the mightiest, not because
Of priestly touch, or blood, or birth,
But by a people's laws.

O Garfield! brave and patient soul!
Long as the tireless tides shall roll
About the Long Branch beaches, where
Thy life went out upon the air,
So long thy land, from sea to sea,
Will hold thy manhood's legacy.

There were two parties: there were those,
In thine own party, called thy foes:
There was a North, there was a South,
Ere blazed the assassin's pistol mouth.

But, lo! thy bed became a throne;
And, as the hours went by, at length
The weakness of thine arm alone
Grew mightier than thy strongest strength.

No petulant murmur, no vexed cry
Of balked ambitions, but a high,
Grand patience! And thy whisper blent
In one heart all the continent.
To-day there are no factions left,
But one America bereft.

O Garfield! fortunate in death wast thou,
Though at the opening of a grand career!
Thou wast a meteor flashing on the brow
Of skies political where oft appear.

And disappear so many stars of promise. Then,
While all men watched thy high course, wondering
If thou wouldst upward sweep or fall again,
Thee from thine orbit mad hands thought to fling;

And, lo! the meteor, with its fitful light,
All on a sudden stood and was a star, —
A radiance fixed, to glorify the night
There where the world's proud constellations are.