My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue,
Noting how to occasion's height he rose ;

How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true;
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows;

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be;
How in good fortune and in ill the same;
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work - such work as few

Ever had laid on head, and heart, and hand

As one who knows where there's a task to do,
Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command:

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,

That God makes instruments to work his will,

If but that will we can arrive to know,
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side
That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,
As in his pleasant boyhood he had plied

His warfare with rude nature's thwarting mights;

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,
The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe,
The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil,
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear

Such were the needs that helped his youth to train : Rough culture — but such trees large fruit may bear,

If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it: four long-suffering years'
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,
And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both with the same unwavering mood;
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him,
Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest –
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips,
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.

The old world and the new, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame !
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high;
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

A deed accurst!

Strokes have been struck before

By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt

If more of horror or disgrace they bore;

But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out.

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven;
And with the martyr's crown crownest a life
With much to praise, little to be forgiven!

TOM TAYLOR, in London Punch,

COMMEMORATION ODE.1

READ AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JULY 21, 1865.

MANY loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon 2 of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her,

Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers,3 fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:

Their higher instinct knew

Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of dare to do;
They followed her and found her
What all may hope to find,

Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,

But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her;
Where faith made whole with deed
Breathes its awakening breath

Into the lifeless creed,

1 Extracts from the Ode.

2 Guerdon: reward, recompense.

8 Our brothers: the students and graduates of Harvard University who

died in the Civil War.

They saw her plumed and mailed,1

With sweet, stern face unveiled,

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

Life may be given in many ways,

And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So generous is fate;

But then to stand beside her

When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds,

Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-chief,2

Whom late the Nation he had led,

With ashes on her head

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:

Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,

Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the heart

Of the unexhausted West,

1 Mailed: clad in armor. 2 Our Martyr-chief: Abraham Lincoln