SECOND ANGEL
The planet where mortals dwell!
I hear it not ... yes, I hear;
How it deepens—a sound of dole!
FIRST ANGEL
Listen! It is the knell
Of a passing soul—
The midnight lamentation
Of some stricken nation
For a Chieftain's soul!
It is just begun,
The many-throated moan ...
Now the clangor swells
As if a million bells
Had blent their tones in one!
Accents of despair
Are these to mortal ear;
But all this wild funereal music blown
And sifted through celestial air
Turns to triumphal pæans here!
Wave upon wave the silvery anthems flow;
Wave upon wave the deep vibrations roll
From that dim sphere below.
Come, let us go—
Surely, some chieftain's soul!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
J. A. G.
Our sorrow sends its shadow round the earth.
So brave, so true! A hero from his birth!
The plumes of Empire moult, in mourning draped,
The lightning's message by our tears is shaped.
Life's vanities that blossom for an hour
Heap on his funeral car their fleeting flower.
Commerce forsakes her temples, blind and dim,
And pours her tardy gold, to homage him.
The notes of grief to age familiar grow
Before the sad privations all must know;
But the majestic cadence which we hear
To-day, is new in either hemisphere.
What crown is this, high hung and hard to reach,
Whose glory so outshines our laboring speech?
The crown of Honor, pure and unbetrayed;
He wins the spurs who bears the knightly aid.