Classic Poem

I WEPT by Lincoln's pall when children's tears,
That saddest of the nation's years,
Were reckoned in the census of her grief;
And flooding every eye,
Of low estate or high,
The crystal sign of sorrow made men peers.
The raindrop on the April leaf
Was not more unashamed. Hand spoke to hand
A universal language; and whene'er
The hopeful met 't was but to mingle their despair.

Our yesterday's war-widowed land
To-day was orphaned. Its victorious voice
Lost memory of the power to rejoice.
For he whom all had learned to love was prone.
The weak had slain the mighty; by a whim
The ordered edifice was overthrown
And lay in futile ruin, mute and dim.

O Death, thou sculptor without art,
What didst thou to the Lincoln of our heart?
Where was the manly eye
That conquered enmity?
Where was the gentle smile
So innocent of guile—
The message of good-will
To all men, whether good or ill?
Where shall we trace
Those treasured lines, half humor and half pain,
That made him doubly brother to the race?
For these, O Death, we search thy mask in vain!

Yet shall the Future be not all bereft:
Not without witness shall its eyes be left.
The soul, again, is visible through Art,
Servant of God and Man. The immortal part
Lives in the miracle of a kindred mind,
That found itself in seeking for its kind,
The humble by the humble is discerned;
And he whose melancholy broke in sunny wit
Could be no stranger unto him who turned
From sad to gay, as though in jest he learned
Some mystery of sorrow. It was writ:
The hand that shapes us Lincoln must be strong
As his that righted our bequeathèd wrong;
The heart that shows us Lincoln must be brave,
An equal comrade unto king or slave;
The mind that gives us Lincoln must be clear
As that of seer
To fathom deeps of faith abiding under tides of fear.
What wonder Fame, impatient, will not wait
To call her sculptor great
Who keeps for us in bronze the soul that saved the State!