The Project Gutenberg EBook of Abraham Lincoln., by Richard Henry Stoddard

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Title: Abraham Lincoln. An Horatian Ode.

Author: Richard Henry Stoddard

Release Date: June 13, 2006 [EBook #18573]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ***

Produced by The University of Michigan's Making of America online book collection (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa/).

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

An Horatian Ode.

By Richard Henry Stoddard.

New York:

Bunce & Huntington, Publishers,

540 Broadway.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,

By BUNCE & HUNTINGTON,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern
District of New York.

Alvord, Printer.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

Born, Feb. 12th, 1809.

Assassinated, Good-Friday, April 14th, 1865.

"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o' the building.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight
With a new Gorgon:—Do not bid me speak;
See, and then speak yourselves.—Awake! awake!
Ring the alarum-bell:—Murder! and treason!

* * * * * * * * * *

"Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself!—up, up, and see
The great doom's image!

* * * * * * * * * *

"Our royal master's murdered!

* * * * * * * * * *

"Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant
There's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

* * *

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further."

Macbeth.

Not as when some great Captain falls
In battle, where his Country calls,
    Beyond the struggling lines
    That push his dread designs

To doom, by some stray ball struck dead:
Or, in the last charge, at the head
    Of his determined men,
    Who must be victors then!

Nor as when sink the civic Great,
The safer pillars of the State,
    Whose calm, mature, wise words
    Suppress the need of swords—

With no such tears as e'er were shed
Above the noblest of our Dead
    Do we to-day deplore
    The Man that is no more!