ABEL MISRAIM.
A mighty man is fallen in Israel:
In Israel a mighty Chief is fallen!
Ye daughters of Jerusalem, lament,
Ye sons of Israel, bewail your loss!
He fell, but not like Jacob, ripe in years
And dim of sight, his work accomplished,
Surrounded by his sons and his sons’ sons
To the fifth generation, blessing all
And bidding them farewell; but like to Moses,
Catching a glimpse of the fair promised land
From Pisgah’s top, forbid to enter it,
And there enjoy the fruit of all his toil.
With eye not dimmed, and with his natural force
Still unabated, he has fallen asleep:
Yet not by God’s behest. Like Absalom
He fell by violence: a nation mourns,
And will not be consoled, as David mourned
For Absalom, his son. As Rachel wept
Her children, for they were not, so America
Weeps for thy fate, our father and our friend;
And cries: “My father, Lincoln, would that I
Could die for thee, my father, Abraham!
Abraham, my father, would that I could die
Instead of thee, my father, oh, my father!”
And she has draped her graceful limbs in weeds,
In drapery of mourning all too weak
To give expression to her speechless woe!
Behold her drooping o’er her honored dead,
Her grief too deep for tears: and there she stands
Gazing intently on his ghastly wounds
Whence blood and brain are oozing, and she cries:
“Behold the work of treason! lo, the deed
Of parricides who lifted up their hands,
Their murderous hands, against their father’s life,
Against their benefactor and their friend!
Whose soul was ever gentleness and love,
Who would have gathered ’neath our glorious flag,
E’en as a hen doth gather her young brood
Beneath her wings, his own rebellious sons,
But they would not! Behold him stark and stiff,
The innocent one, the guileless and the just,
Who for our sins has drunk this bitter cup!
Oh, had it passed away and he been spared!
As Jesus suffered for the human race,
So Lincoln suffered for a nation’s crime,
On that same day on which the Saviour died!”
Unveil his face, and note that saintly head
Disfigured by those gashes whose red mouths
Cry, not for vengeance, but for mercy still
E’en towards his murderers! Shall Justice sleep,
Because his gentle spirit wills it so?
Shall God’s right hand be stayed from smiting all
Who in this deed of hell have taken part?
Who sanction it by word or act? Not so!
If men keep dumb, then shall the stones speak out,
And raise a loud, a shrill heaven-piercing cry,
And call upon the thunderbolts to strike
The guilty monsters who have done this deed!
Or should these linger, may a blight from God
Fall on their fields, their houses and their flocks!
As outcasts may they wander o’er this earth,
The mark of Cain upon their foreheads set!
May every heart of matron, man and maid
Be steeled against them, and no pity soothe
Their hours of dark despair, until that life
Which cowardice would screen from justice now
Become a burden, and they call on death,
But call in vain, to end their wretchedness!
They have embalmed our chief, even as of old
The patriarch in Egypt was embalmed;
For whom they mourned full three score days and ten.
But for our patriarch, three score years and ten,
Nay, time itself will scarce suffice to mourn;
And not alone his native land, but all
The lands and races of the earth shall mourn!
Where’er the name of Liberty is known,
Or where the faintest whispers of it reach;
For in his life she too has been assailed.
From Cape de Verde to Guardefui’s rock,
From Table Mountain to Calabria’s shore,
From Calpe to the Ural hills, and thence
To dusky Ind and Siam, and the coasts
Of yellow China and far off Japan;
From the Antarctic to the howling caves,
Where ocean thunders ’neath the Northern Bear;
Through all the Atlantic and Pacific isles,
The mournful echoes, catching up the wail,
Shall swell the diapason of our woe,
And men shall shudder when they hear the strain.
And as the heavens were darkened, and the sun
Was veiled in sorrow, and the earth was rent,
On that sad day when Christ, the Saviour, died,
Even so a gloom and horror shall brood o’er
Men’s moral sense—so shall their hearts be rent
With grief and horror, when they hear this cry,
Until the very tyrants on their thrones
Who gloat o’er this huge crime—whose lavish gold
And words of cheer have served perhaps to nerve
The assassin’s hand to do this frightful deed—
Shall tremble for their work and topple down,
Even as the idols in their temples fell
Before the glory of the Ark of God.
And as the patriarch, Jacob, was inurned
In Canaan, in the cave of Machpelah,
Which Abraham bought of Ephron, and in which
He and his loved Sarah slept in peace;
Where Isaac and Rebecca took their rest,
And Jacob buried Leah: so our Chief
Will soon be gathered to his kin, and laid
Beneath the turf of his own Illinois,
To whose fair name his own immortal fame
Shall add fresh luster, while this earth endures.
And SPRINGFIELD, proud to guard the patriot’s dust
Shall be henceforth a MECCA to the sons
Of freedom, temperance and Christian love,
To make their pilgrimages to that spot,
And bend in reverence at the good man’s shrine,
The second Washington, as men have bowed,
And ever will do honor, to the first!
And as the Canaanites, when they observed
The grief of Israel’s children round his grave,
And heard their lamentations loud and long,
Said, “This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians,”
And Abel Misraim named that sacred place;
So all the nations scattered o’er our globe,
Noting our grief, and listening to the cry
Of our great sorrow, shall exclaim, “Behold!
This is a grievous mourning to the Free!
Their wail of woe goes up from all the land
For Abraham Lincoln, their dear martyred Saint!”
And these will join us in our sorrowing,
And tears shall flow in streams from every eye,
And sobs from every heart, till all mankind
Shall mourn in unison, and the whole earth
One mighty ABEL MISRAIM shall be named!