In England, Sept. 20, 1881.
New York Tribune.
PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
The hush of the sick-room; the muffled tread;
Fond, questioning eye; mute lip, and listening ear;
Where wife and children watch 'twixt hope and fear,
A father's, husband's living-dying bed!—
The hush of a great nation, when its head
Lies stricken! Lo! along the streets he's borne,
Pale, through rank'd crowds, this gray September morn,
'Mid straining eyes, sad brows unbonneted,
And reverent speechlessness!—a "people's voice!"
Nay but a peoples silence! through the soul
Of the wide world its subtler echoes roll,
O brother nation England for her part
Is with thee: God willing she whose heart
Throbbed with thy pain shall with thy joy rejoice.
Sept. 6, 1881.
London Spectator.
AFTER THE BURIAL.
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Fallen with autumns falling leaf,
Ere yet his summers noon was past,
Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief,—
What words can match a woe so vast?
And whose the chartered claim to speak
The sacred grief where all have part,
When sorrow saddens every cheek,
And broods in every aching heart?
Yet nature prompts the burning phrase
That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall,
The loud lament, the sorrowing praise,
The silent tear that love lets fall.
In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme,
Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir,—
The singers of the new born time,
And trembling age with outworn lyre.