Lincoln, 1865
An end at last! The echoes of the war—
The weary war beyond the Western waves—
Die in the distance. Freedom's rising star
Beacons above a hundred thousand graves;
The graves of heroes who have won the fight,
Who in the storming of the stubborn town
Have rung the marriage peal of might and right,
And scaled the cliffs and cast the dragon down.
Pæans of armies thrill across the sea,
Till Europe answers—"Let the struggle cease.
The bloody page is turned; the next may be
For ways of pleasantness and paths of peace!"
A golden morn—a dawn of better things—
The olive-branch—clasping of hands again—
A noble lesson read to conquered kings—
A sky that tempests had not scoured in vain.
This from America we hoped and him
Who ruled her "in the spirit of his creed."
Does the hope last when all our eyes are dim,
As history records her darkest deed?
The pilot of his people through the strife,
With his strong purpose turning scorn to praise,
E'en at the close of battle reft of life
And fair inheritance of quiet days.
Defeat and triumph found him calm and just,
He showed how clemency should temper power,
And, dying, left to future times in trust
The memory of his brief victorious hour.
O'ermastered by the irony of fate,
The last and greatest martyr of his cause;
Slain like Achilles at the Scæan gate,
He saw the end, and fixed "the purer laws."
May these endure and, as his work, attest
The glory of his honest heart and hand—
The simplest, and the bravest, and the best—
The Moses and the Cromwell of his land.
Too late the pioneers of modern spite,
Awe-stricken by the universal gloom,
See his name lustrous in Death's sable night,
And offer tardy tribute at his tomb.
But we who have been with him all the while,
Who knew his worth, and loved him long ago,
Rejoice that in the circuit of our isle
There is at last no room for Lincoln's foe.
LINCOLN AND CABINET
"The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation."
Painted by Frank B. Carpenter.
From left to right—Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; President Lincoln; Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; William H. Seward, Secretary of State; J. P. Usher, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General; Edward Bates, Attorney-General
Christopher Pearse Cranch, born in Alexandria, Virginia, March 8, 1813. Graduated at the school of Divinity, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1835, but retired from the ministry in 1842 to devote himself to art. He studied in Italy in 1846-8, and lived and painted in 1853-63, and, returning to New York, was elected a member of the National Academy in 1864. He was a graceful writer of both prose and verse.