The following poem was written expressly for the exercises held on the Nineteenth Anniversary of President Lincoln's death, at his tomb, Springfield, Illinois, April 15, 1884.
[THE TOMB OF LINCOLN]
| Grandeur and glory await around the bed Where sleeps in lowly peace the illustrious dead; He rose a meteor, upon wondering men, But rose in strength, never to set again. A king of men, though born in lowly state, A man sincerely good and nobly great; Tender, but firm; faithful and kind, and true, The Nation's choice, the Nation's Saviour, too; When Liberty and Truth shall reign for evermore, From Oregon to Florida's perpetual May, From Shasta's awful peak to Massachusetts Bay,— Then our children's children, by the cottage door, In the schoolroom, from the pulpit, at the bar, Shall look up to thee as to a beacon star, And deduce the lesson from thy life and death, That the patriot's lofty courage and the Christian's faith [top] Conquer honors that outweigh ambition's gaudiest prize, Triumph o'er the grave, and open the gates of Paradise. Schooled through life's early hardships to endure, To raise the oppressed, to save and shield the poor; Prudent in counsel, honest in debate, Patient to hear and judge, patient to wait; The calm, the wise, the witty and the proved, Whom millions honored, and whom millions loved; Swayed by no baleful lust of pride or power, The shining pageants of the passing hour, Led by no scheming arts, no selfish aim, Ambitious for no pomp, nor wealth, nor fame, No planning hypocrite, no pliant tool, A high-born patriot, of Heaven's noblest school; Cool and unshaken in the maddest storm, For in the clouds he traced the Almighty's form; Worn with the weary heart and aching head, Worse than the picket, with his ceaseless tread, He kept—as bound by some resistless fate— His broad, strong hand upon the helm of State; Nor turned, in fear, his heart or hope away, Till on the field his tent a ruin lay. His tent, a ruin; but the owner's name Stands on the pinnacle of human fame, Inscribed in lines of light, and nations see, Through him, the people's life and liberty. What high ideas, what noble acts he taught! To make men free in life, and limb, and thought, To rise, to soar, to scorn the oppressor's rod, To live in grander life, to live for God; [top] To stand for justice, freedom and the right, To dare the conflict, strong in God's own might; The methods taught by Him, by him were tried, And he, to conscience true, a martyr died. As the great sun pursues his heavenly way And fills with life and joy the livelong day, Till, the full journey, in glory dressed, He seeks his crimson couch beneath the west; So, with his labor done, our hero sleeps; Above his tomb a ransomed Nation weeps; And grateful pæans o'er his ashes rise— Dear is his fame—his glory never dies. Bring flowers, fresh flowers, bring plumes with nodding crests, To wreath the tomb where our great hero rests; Bring pipe and tabret, eloquence and song, And sound the loving tribute, loud and long; A Nation bows, and mourns his honored name, A Nation proudly keeps his deathless fame; Let vale and rock, and hill, and land, and sea His memory swell—the anthem of the free. |
STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
On the State Capitol Grounds at Lincoln, Nebraska. Unveiled September 2, 1912. Daniel Chester French, sculptor
John Townsend Trowbridge, born September 18, 1827, in Ogden, New York. He lived the ordinary life of a country boy, going to school six months in the year till he was fourteen, after which he had to work on the farm in summer. His books had more interest to him than his work, and he managed to learn more out of school than in it. At sixteen he wrote articles in verse and prose for magazines and journals. He was a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly.
During the great rebellion, he wrote several stories of the war: The Drummer Boy, 1863, and The Three Scouts, 1865. On the return of peace he spent some four months in the principal southern States, for the purpose of gaining accurate views of the condition of society there after the war. He published the result of these observations June, 1866, in a volume entitled, The South. A collected edition of his poems was published in 1869, entitled The Vagabonds, and Other Poems.