I. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY
The nation was in mourning at the unspeakable tragedy. Friend and foe had just begun to learn how great was the difference between him and other men. Coming as it did at the close of the war, in the very dawn of peace, the assassination seemed so needless and cruel, even in the name of his bitterest foe.
Walt Whitman wrote one of the most stirring appreciations of the time.
“O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every wrack, 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 the bouquets and ribboned 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 me, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored 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.”
William Cullen Bryant wrote the ode for the funeral services held in New York City. Two of the stanzas are as follows:
“In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that husheth all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.
“Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Has placed thee with the Sons of Light,
Among the noble hearts of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote for the funeral services at Concord, Massachusetts, a poem of which the following is the last stanza:
“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.”