Perish the wicked!" or blaspheming,
Lies our Belshazzar, our Sennacherib,
Our Pharaoh,he whose heart God hardenéd,
So that he would not let the people go."

Self-glorifying sinners! Why, this man
Was but like other men :-you, Levite small,
Who shut your saintly ears, and prate of hell
And heretics, because outside church-doors,
Your church-doors, congregations poor and small
Praise Heaven in their own way; - you, autocrat
Of all the hamlets, who add field to field
And house to house, whose slavish children cower
Before your tyrant footstep; -you, foul-tongued
Fanatic or ambitious egotist,

Who thinks God stoops from his high majesty
To lay his finger on your puny head,
And crown it, that you henceforth may parade
Your maggotship throughout the wondering
world, -

"I am the Lord's anointed!"

Fools and blind! This Czar, this emperor, this disthroned corpse, Lying so straightly in an icy calm Grander than sovereignty, was but as ye, — No better and no worse; - Heaven mend us all!

LIFE may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful 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,

Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief :

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

Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth,
But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!

They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Nothing of Europe here,

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface;
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face

to face.

I praise him not; it were too late ; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he :

He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

BURIAL OF LINCOLN.

PEACE! Let the long procession come,
For hark! - the mournful, muffled drum,
The trumpet's wail afar;
And see the awful car!

Peace! Let the sad procession go,
While cannon boom, and bells toll slow;
And go, thou sacred car,
Bearing our woe afar!

Go, darkly borne, from State to State,
Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait
To honor, all they can,
The dust of that good man!

Go, grandly borne, with such a train
As greatest kings might die to gain:
The just, the wise, the brave
Attend thee to the grave!

And you, the soldiers of our wars,
Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars,
Salute him once again,

Your late commander, - slain !

Yes, let your tears indignant fall,
But leave your muskets on the wall;
Your country needs you now
Beside the forge, the plough!

So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes
The fallen to his last repose.

Beneath no mighty dome,
But in his modest home,

The churchyard where his children rest,
The quiet spot that suits him best,

There shall his grave be made,
And there his bones be laid!

And there his countrymen shall come,
With memory proud, with pity dumb,

And strangers, far and near,
For many and many a year!

For many a year and many an age,
While History on her ample page
The virtues shall enroll
Of that paternal soul !

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

KANE.

DIED FEBRUARY 16, 1857.

ALOFT upon an old basaltic crag,

Around the secret of the mystic zone, A mighty nation's star-bespangled flag Flutters alone,

And underneath, upon the lifeless front
Of that drear cliff, a simple name is traced;
Fit type of him who, famishing and gaunt,
But with a rocky purpose in his soul,
Breasted the gathering snows,

Clung to the drifting floes,

By want beleaguered, and by winter chased, Seeking the brother lost amid that frozen waste.

Not many months ago we greeted him,

Crowned with the icy honors of the North, Across the land his hard-won fame went forth, And Maine's deep woods were shaken limb by limb. His own mild Keystone State, sedate and prim, Burst from decorous quiet as he came.

Hot Southern lips, with eloquence aflame, Sounded his triumph. Texas, wild and grim, Proffered its horny hand. The large-lunged West, From out his giant breast,

Yelled its frank welcome. And from main to main, Jubilant to the sky,

Thundered the mighty cry,

HONOR TO KANE!

In vain, in vain beneath his feet we flung
The reddening roses! All in vain we poured
The golden wine, and round the shining board
Sent the toast circling, till the rafters rung
With the thrice-tripled honors of the feast!
Scarce the buds wilted and the voices ceased
Ere the pure light that sparkled in his eyes,
Bright as auroral fires in Southern skies,

Faded and faded! And the brave young heart
That the relentless Arctic winds had robbed
Of all its vital heat, in that long quest
For the lost captain, now within his breast
More and more faintly throbbed.

His was the victory; but as his grasp
Closed on the laurel crown with eager clasp,
Death launched a whistling dart;
And ere the thunders of applause were done
His bright eyes closed forever on the sun!
Too late, too late the splendid prize he won
In the Olympic race of Science and of Art!
Like to some shattered berg that, pale and lone,
Drifts from the white North to a Tropic zone,
And in the burning day
Wastes peak by peak away,

Till on some rosy even

It dies with sunlight blessing it; so he Tranquilly floated to a Southern sea,

And melted into heaven!

Pole

Gazes with dead face on the seas that roll

We will not weep for him who died so well; But we will gather round the hearth, and tell

What tale of peril and self-sacrifice!
Prisoned amid the fastnesses of ice,

With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow! Night lengthening into months; the ravenous floe

Crunching the massive ships, as the white bear
Crunches his prey. The insufficient share
Of loathsome food;

The lethargy of famine; the despair

Urging to labor, nervelessly pursued ; Toil done with skinny arms, and faces hued Like pallid masks, while dolefully behind Glimmered the fading embers of a mind! That awful hour, when through the prostrate band Delirium stalked, laying his burning hand

Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew; The whispers of rebellion, faint and few At first, but deepening ever till they grew Into black thoughts of murder, such the throng Of horrors bound the hero. High the song Should be that hymns the noble part he played! Sinking himself, yet ministering aid

To all around him. By a mighty will
Living defiant of the wants that kill,
Because his death would seal his comrades' fate;
Cheering with ceaseless and inventive skill
Those polar waters, dark and desolate.
Equal to every trial, every fate,

He stands, until spring, tardy with relief,
Unlocks the icy gate,

And the pale prisoners thread the world once more,
To the steep cliffs of Greenland's pastoral shore
Bearing their dying chief!

Time was when he should gain his spurs of gold From royal hands, who wooed the knightly state; The knell of old formalities is tolled,

And the world's knights are now self-consecrate. No grander episode doth chivalry hold

In all its annals, back to Charlemagne, Than that lone vigil of unceasing pain, Faithfully kept through hunger and through cold, By the good Christian knight, Elisha Kane! FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN.

THE OLD ADMIRAL.

ADMIRAL STEWART, U. S. N.

GONE at last,

That brave old hero of the past! His spirit has a second birth, An unknown, grander life;

All of him that was earth

Lies mute and cold,

Like a wrinkled sheath and old

Thrown off forever from the shimmering blade That has good entrance made

Upon some distant, glorious strife.

From another generation,

A simpler age, to ours Old Ironsides came; The morn and noontide of the nation

Alike he knew, nor yet outlived his fame,

O, not outlived his fame!

The dauntless men whose service guards our shore Lengthen still their glory-roll

With his name to lead the scroll,

As a flagship at her fore

Carries the Union, with its azure and the stars, Symbol of times that are no more And the old heroic wars.

He was the one

Whom Death had spared alone

Of all the captains of that lusty age, Who sought the foeman where he lay, On sea or sheltering bay,

Nor till the prize was theirs repressed their

rage.

They are gone, - all gone:

They rest with glory and the undying Powers; Only their name and fame, and what they saved,

are ours!

It was fifty years ago,

Upon the Gallic Sea,

He bore the banner of the free,

And fought the fight whereof our children know, -
The deathful, desperate fight!
Under the fair moon's light

The frigate squared, and yawed to left and right.
Every broadside swept to death a score !
Roundly played her guns and well, till their fiery
ensigns fell,

Neither foe replying more.

All in silence, when the night-breeze cleared the air,

Old Ironsides rested there,

Locked in between the twain, and drenched with blood.

Then homeward, like an eagle with her prey! O, it was a gallant fray,

That fight in Biscay Bay!

Fearless the captain stood, in his youthful hardi

hood:

He was the boldest of them all,

Our brave old Admiral!

And still our heroes bleed, Taught by that olden deed.

Whether of iron or of oak

The ships we marshal at our country's need, Still speak their cannon now as then they spoke; Still floats our unstruck banner from the mast

As in the stormy past.

Lay him in the ground:

Let him rest where the ancient river rolls; Let him sleep beneath the shadow and the sound Of the bell whose proclamation, as it tolls, Is of Freedom and the gift our fathers gave. Lay him gently down:

The clamor of the town

Will not break the slumbers deep, the beautiful ripe sleep,

Of this lion of the wave,

Will not trouble the old Admiral in his grave.

Earth to earth his dust is laid.
Methinks his stately shade

On the shadow of a great ship leaves the shore ;
Over cloudless western seas
Seeks the far Hesperides,

The islands of the blest,

Where no turbulent billows roar,

Where is rest.

His ghost upon the shadowy quarter stands
Nearing the deathless lands.

There all his martial mates, renewed and strong,
Await his coming long.

I see the happy Heroes rise

With gratulation in their eyes: "Welcome, old comrade," Lawrence cries; "Ah, Stewart, tell us of the wars ! Who win the glory and the scars?

How floats the skyey flag,- how many stars? Still speak they of Decatur's name, Of Bainbridge's and Perry's fame ? Of me, who earliest came?

Make ready, all:

Room for the Admiral!

Come, Stewart, tell us of the wars!"

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

One the grisly King of Terrors; one a Bourbon, with his errors, late to conscience-clearing set.

Well his fevered pulse may flutter, and the priests their mass may mutter with such fervor

as they may :

Cross and chrysm, and genuflection, mop and and interjection, will not frighten Death away.

mow,

By the dying despot sitting, at the hard heart's portals hitting, shocking the dull brain to work,

Death makes clear what life has hidden, chides what life has left unchidden, quickens

truth life tried to burke.

He but ruled within his borders after Holy Church's orders, did what Austria bade him do ;

By their guidance flogged and tortured; highborn men and gently nurtured chained with crime's felonious crew.

What if summer fevers gripped them, what if winter freezings nipped them, till they rotted in their chains?

He had word of Pope and Kaiser; none could holier be or wiser; theirs the counsel, his the reins.

So he pleads excuses eager, clutching, with his fingers meagre, at the bedclothes as he speaks;

But King Death sits grimly grinning at the Bourbon's cobweb-spinning, as each cobweb-cable breaks.

And the poor soul, from life's eylot, rudderless, without a pilot, drifteth slowly down the dark; While 'mid rolling incense vapor, chanted dirge, and flaring taper, lies the body, stiff and stark.

PUNCH.

DEATH-BED OF BOMBA, KING OF
NAPLES, AT BARI. 1859.

COULD I pass those lounging sentries, through the aloe-bordered entries, up the sweep of squalid stair,

On through chamber after chamber, where the sunshine's gold and amber turn decay to beauty rare;

I should reach a guarded portal, where for strife of issue mortal, face to face two kings are met,

BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

Nor a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly, at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeams' misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin inclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay, like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ,
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent or over-civil,

That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom, and wise Achitophel.
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left no faction, but of that was left.

JOHN DRYDEN.

WHITEFIELD.

FROM "HOPE."

LEUCONOMUS (beneath well-sounding Greek
I slur a name a poet may not speak)
Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage,
And bore the pelting storm of half an age;
The very butt of slander, and the blot
For every dart that malice ever shot.

The man that mentioned him at once dismissed
All mercy from his lips, and sneered and hissed ;
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew,
And perjury stood up to swear all true;
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretence,
His speech rebellion against common sense;
A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And when by that of reason, a mere fool;
The world's best comfort was, his doom was past;
Die when he might, he must be damned at last.

Now, truth, perform thine office; waft aside The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride, Reveal (the man is dead) to wondering eyes This more than monster in his proper guise.

He loved the world that hated him; the tear That dropped upon his Bible was sincere ; Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was a blameless life; And he that forged and he that threw the dart Had each a brother's interest in his heart. Paul's love of Christ and steadiness unbribed Were copied close in him, and well transcribed. He followed Paul; his zeal a kindred flame, His apostolic charity the same. Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas, Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease; Like him he labored, and like him, content To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went. Blush, Calumny! and write upon his tomb, If honest Eulogy can spare thee room, Which, aimed at him, has pierced the offended Thy deep repentance of thy thousand lies,

skies;