Classic Poem

TRAGEDY AND REVELATION

Leaning his war-worn spirit on the hearts
Of wife and children in embraces sweet,
He found the Holy of Holies of his life —
What God had saved for him while Richmond burned
And Appomattox cordons closed him round.
O love and home, O peace and rest that shrine
The heavenlies midst the earthlies of the world,
Faith's structures on God's rock foundations built,
Time's winds and floods shall never overwhelm you!

He scarce had greeted love and hearth and friends,
When presently a rumor swept across
The Southern Capital, and in its path
A train of rumors, monstrous, ominous.
Men stood aghast, hard-clutching at their hearts,
And the whole Nation, North and South as one,
Staggering beneath Hell's sudden murderous blow,
Uttered a mighty cry of anguishment,
A thunderous cry of horror and dismay,
Like Egypt's when her smitten people bowed
Over their first-born dead in every home,
And all the midnight winds were filled with wailings.
Lincoln was dead, the High Priest of the Nation
With its new birth of freedom under God.
Lincoln was dead — slain at the very altar
Of the great Temple of Emancipation.
As the wild ocean's ebbing waves at night
Dash through some narrow channel of the rocks
And break in fury o'er a quiet cove,
So rolled the violent tale of crime and woe,
Bursting across the threshold of Lee's home.
It whelmed his brain, his heart, his every sense
With horror working anguish — for at last
His soul had had a vision of Lincoln's soul,
Beholding him the Savior of the Nation.
And now a slaughterous hand had laid him low —
So low, so low. A mighty Tree of Life
God planted for the healing of the world
Had fallen, and lay prostrate on the earth, —
So low, so low, so prostrate and so fallen.
Now knew he why upon the yesternight,
Good Friday night, he slept not, feeling gloom,
Confusing tumult and bewildering woe
Riding the winds and rushing over him.
They were the black hours when the great Christ-Man,
The South's just friend, his own just friend likewise,
Fixed to his cross was slowly dying, while
Hell's loosed wild minions pressing round him cast
Lots for his seamless robe of government.