ADELINE D. TRAIN WHITNEY. Born at Boston, Mass: 1824 BEHIND THE MASK. It was an old distorted face, An uncouth visage rough and wild, And so, contrasting strange to-day, Behind grey hairs and furrow'd brow For while the inexorable years To sadden'd features fit their mould, Beneath the work of time and tears Waits something that will not grow old. The rifted pine upon the hill, Scarr'd by the lightning and the wind, Through bolt and blight doth nurture still Young fibres underneath the rind ; And many a storm-blast, fiercely sent, The struggling soul must wear in pain. Yet, when she comes to claim her own, RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. Born at Hingham, Mass: 1825— ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (An Horatian Ode.) Nor as when some great Captain falls To doom, by some stray ball struck dead : Who must be victors then! Nor as when sink the civic Great, Whose calm, mature, wise words With no such tears as e'er were shed Do we to-day deplore The Man that is no more! Our sorrow hath a wider scope, That waits-what is to come! Not more astounded had we been We woke to find a mourning Earth- Such thunderbolts, in other lands, No Cæsar he, whom we lament, Not by the weary cares of State, Not in the dark, wild tide of War, In awful anarchy: Four fateful years of mortal strife, Which slowly drain'd the Nation's life, (Yet, for each drop that ran There sprang an armed man!) Not then ;-but when by measures meet,— By courage, patience, skill, The People's fix'd “ We will !” Had pierced, had crush'd Rebellion dead,- He fell-0, how he fell! The time, the place, the stealing Shape,- It is a hideous Dream! A Dream?—what means this pageant, then? A Who speak not when they meet, The flags half-mast, that late so high (The stars no brightness shed, The black festoons that stretch for miles, The cannon's sudden, sullen boom,- The dreadful Car that comes?` Cursed be the hand that fired the shot! The frenzied brain that hatch'd the plot! Thy Country's Father slain By thee, thou worse than Cain! Tyrants have fallen by such as thou, But he, the Man we mourn to-day, Cool should he be, of balanced powers, Impatient, headstrong, wild,- And this he was, who most unfit With such a homely face, Such rustic manners,-speech uncouth,(That somehow blunder'd out the Truth!) Untried, untrain❜d to bear The more than kingly Care? Ay! And his genius put to scorn To what, untaught, he knew— The People, of whom he was one. (Whose bones, methinks, make room, A labouring man, with horny hands, One of the People! Born to be To share, yet rise above Their shifting hate and love. Common his mind (it seem'd so then), No hasty fool, of stubborn will, Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt, And was, of course, at fault : Heard all opinions, nothing loath, |