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He was the Southern mother leaning forth,
At dead of night to hear the cannon roar,
Beseeching God to turn the cruel North
And break it that her son might come once more;
He was New England's maiden pale and pure,
Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain;
He was the mangled body of the dead;
He writhing did endure

Wounds and disfigurement and racking pain,
Gangrene and amputation, all things dread.

He was the North, the South, the East, the West,
The thrall, the master, all of us in one;

There was no section that he held the best;
His love shone as impartial as the sun;
And so revenge appealed to him in vain,
He smiled at it, as at a thing forlorn,
And gently put it from him, rose and stood
A moment's space in pain,

Remembering the prairies and the corn
And the glad voices of the field and wood.

And then when Peace set wing upon the wind
And northward flying fanned the clouds away,
He passed as martyrs pass. Ah, who shall find
The chord to sound the pathos of that day!
Mid-April blowing sweet across the land,
New bloom of freedom opening to the world,

Loud paans of the homeward-looking host,
The salutations grand

From grimy guns, the tattered flags upfurled;
And he must sleep to all the glory lost!

Sleep! loss!

But there is neither sleep nor loss,

And all the glory mantles him about;

Above his breast the precious banners cross,
Does he not hear his armies tramp and shout?
Oh, every kiss of mother, wife or maid
Dashed on the grizzly lip of veteran,

Comes forthright to that calm and quiet mouth,
And will not be delayed,

And every slave, no longer slave but man,
Sends up a blessing from the broken South.

He is not dead, France knows he is not dead;
He stirs strong hearts in Spain and Germany,
In far Siberian mines his words are said,
He tells the English Ireland shall be free,
He calls poor serfs about him in the night,
And whispers of a power that laughs at kings,
And of a force that breaks the strongest chain;
Old tyranny feels his might

Tearing away its deepest fastenings,
And jewelled sceptres threaten him in vain.

Years pass away, but freedom does not pass,

Thrones crumble, but man's birthright crumbles not,

And, like the wind across the prairie grass,
A whole world's aspirations fan this spot
With ceaseless panting after liberty,

One breath of which would make dark Russia fair,
And blow sweet summer through the exile's cave,
And set the exile free;

For which I pray, here in the open air

Of Freedom's morning-tide, by Lincoln's grave.

Maurice Thompson

1893.

LINCOLN

Hurt was the Nation with a mighty wound,
And all her ways were filled with clam'rous sound.
Wailed loud the South with unremitting grief,
And wept the North that could not find relief.
Then madness joined its harshest tone to strife:
A minor note swelled in the song of life
Till, stirring with the love that filled his breast,
But still, unflinching at the Right's behest
Grave Lincoln came, strong-handed, from afar,-
The mighty Homer of the lyre of war!

'Twas he who bade the raging tempest cease,
Wrenched from his strings the harmony of peace,
Muted the strings that made the discord, — Wrong,
And gave his spirit up in thund'rous song.
Oh, mighty Master of the mighty lyre!

Earth heard and trembled at thy strains of fire :
Earth learned of thee what Heav'n already knew,
And wrote thee down among her treasured few!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

1899.

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