He speaks to crowded faces—round him surge
Thousands and millions of excited men;
He hears them cheer—sees some vast light emerge—
Is borne as on a tempest—then—ah, then,
The fancies fade, the fever's work is past;
A deepened pang, then recollection's thrill;
He feels the faithful lips that kiss their last,
His heart beats once in answer, and is still!
The curtain falls: but hushed, as if afraid,
The people wait, tear-stained, with heaving breast;
'Twill rise again, they know, when he is laid
With Freedom, in the Capitol, at rest.
John Boyle O'Reilly.
For two days, September 22 and 23, the body lay in state in the rotunda of the Capitol. Then, in a long train crowded with the most illustrious of his countrymen, the dead President was borne to Cleveland, Ohio, and buried on September 26, in a beautiful cemetery overlooking the waters of Lake Erie.
AT THE PRESIDENT'S GRAVE
All summer long the people knelt
And listened at the sick man's door:
Each pang which that pale sufferer felt
Throbbed through the land from shore to shore;
And as the all-dreaded hour drew nigh,
What breathless watching, night and day!
What tears, what prayers! Great God on high,
Have we forgotten how to pray!
O broken-hearted, widowed one,
Forgive us if we press too near!
Dead is our husband, father, son,—
For we are all one household here.
And not alone here by the sea,
And not in his own land alone,
Are tears of anguish shed with thee—
In this one loss the world is one.