Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon,
Hush the mirth and the shout;—
God is God! and the ways of Jehovah
Are past finding out.
Lo! the beautiful feet on the mountains,
That yesterday stood;
The white feet that came with glad tidings,
Are dabbled in blood.
The Nation that firmly was settling
The crown on her head,
Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes,
And watches her dead.
Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing,
Is lying so low?
O, my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish,
Do you feel, do you know,
That the hand which reached out of the darkness
Hath taken the whole?
Yea, the arm and the head of the people—
The heart and the soul!
And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence
A nation has wept;
Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest,
A man ever kept!
Once this good man, we mourn, overwearied,
Worn, anxious, oppressed,
Was going out from his audience chamber
For a season to rest;
Unheeding the thousands who waited
To honor and greet,
When the cry of a child smote upon him,
And turned back his feet.
"Three days hath a woman been waiting,"
Said they, "patient and meek."
And he answered, "Whatever her errand,
Let me hear; let her speak!"
So she came, and stood trembling before him,
And pleaded her cause;
Told him all; how her child's erring father
Had broken the laws.