Lincoln Day Entertainments. Various
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Rose-red and blood-red
The stripes forever gleam;
Snow-white and soul-white—
The good forefather's dream;
Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright—
The gloried guidon of the day; a shelter through the night.
Your Flag and my Flag!
And, oh, how much it holds—
Your land and my land—
Secure within its folds!
Your heart and my heart
Beat quicker at the sight;
Sun-kissed and wind-tossed,
Red and blue and white.
The one Flag—the great Flag—the Flag for me and you—
Glorified all else beside—the red and white and blue!
Your Flag and my Flag!
To every star and stripe
The drums beat as hearts beat
And fifers shrilly pipe!
Your Flag and my Flag—
A blessing in the sky;
Your hope and my hope—
It never hid a lie!
Home land and far land and half the world around,
Old Glory hears our glad salute and ripples to the sound!
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN
Charles G. Halpin
HE FILLED the nation's eye and heart,
An honored, loved, familiar name,
So much a brother that his fame
Seemed of our lives a common part.
His towering figure, sharp and spare,
Was with such nervous tension strung,
As if on each strained sinew swung
The burden of a people's care.
He was his country's, not his own;
He had no wish but for her weal;
Not for himself could think or feel,
But as a laborer for her throne.
O, loved and lost! thy patient toil
Had robed our cause in Victory's light;
Our country stood redeemed and bright,
With not a slave on all her soil.
A martyr to the cause of man,
His blood is freedom's eucharist,
And in the world's great hero list,
His name shall lead the van.
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
Walt Whitman
Abraham Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth, almost exactly four years after the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter. This song and Edwin Markham's poem on Lincoln are two of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero.
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead!
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here, Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Joel Benton
SOME opulent force of genius, soul, and race,
Some deep life-current from far centuries
Flowed to his mind and lighted his sad eyes,
And gave his name, among great names, high place.
But these are miracles we may not trace,
Nor say why from a source and lineage mean
He rose to grandeur never dreamt or seen
Or told on the long scroll of history's space.
The tragic fate of one broad hemisphere
Fell on stern days to his supreme control,
All that the world and liberty held dear
Pressed like a nightmare on his patient soul.
Martyr beloved, on whom, when life was done,
Fame looked, and saw another Washington!
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Richard Watson Gilder
THIS bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day—
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength—his pure and mighty heart.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
James Russell Lowell
This is a fragment of the noble Commemoration Ode delivered at Harvard College to the memory of those of its students who fell in the war which kept the country whole.
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:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on this world-honored urn.