1820.

And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine.

It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply

That mourns a man like thee.

Fitz-Greene Halleck.

16

20

24

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN !

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we

sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim

and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red!

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

8

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the

bells;

Rise up for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here, Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

16

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and

still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse

nor will;

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage

closed and done;

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with

object won:

1865.

Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt. Whitman.

24

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair,

His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair,

Of power or will to shine, of art to please;

8

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,

Judging each step as though the way were plain,

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,

Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain,

12

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? 16

Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. 20

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue,

Noting how to occasion's height he rose; How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true;

How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows; 24

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be;
How, in good fortune and in ill, the same;
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work,-such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,As one who knows, where there's a task to do. Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command;

Who trusts the strength will with the burden

grow,

28

32

That God makes instruments to work his will,

If but that will we can arrive to know.

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting
mights,-

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,

40

The iron bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil, The prairie hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

44

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear,— Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train:

Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear,

If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

48

So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it; four long-suffering years'
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through,
And then he heard the hisses changed to
cheers,

52

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood,

Till, as he came on light from darkling days, And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

56