Poems (Carmichael)/President Lincoln's Funeral

by Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL.

   Toll! Toll!
   Toll! Toll!
All rivers seaward wend.
   Toll! Toll!
   Toll! Toll!
Weep for the nation's friend.

Every home and hall was shrouded,
 Every thoroughfare was still;
Every brow was darkly clouded,
 Every heart was faint and chill.
Oh! the inky drop of poison
 In our bitter draught of grief!
Oh! the sorrow of a nation
 Mourning for its murdered chief!

   Toll! Toll!
   Toll! Toll!
Bound is the reaper's sheaf—
   Toll! Toll!
   Toll! Toll!
All mortal life is brief.
   Toll! Toll!
   Toll! Toll!
Weep for the nation's chief!

Bands of mourning draped the homestead,
 And the sacred house of prayer;
Mourning folds lay black and heavy
 On true bosoms everywhere:
Yet there were no tear-drops streaming
 From the deep and solemn eye
Of the hour that mutely waited
 Till the funeral train went by.
Oh! there is a woe that crushes
 All expression with its weight!
There is pain that numbs and hushes
 Feeling's sense, it is so great.

Strongest arms were closely folded,
 Most impassioned lips at rest;
Scarcely seemed a heaving motion
 In the nation's wounded breast;
Tears were frozen in their sources,
 Blushes burned themselves away:
Language bled through broken heart-threads,
 Lips had nothing left to say.
Yet there was a marble sorrow
 In each still face, chiseled deep;
Something more than words could utter,
 Something more than tears could weep.

Selfishly the nation mourned him,
 Mourned its chieftain and its friend;
Eye no traitor mist could darken,
 Arm no traitor power could bend;
Heart that gathered the true pulses
 Of the land's indignant veins,
And, with their tempestuous spurning,
 Broke the slave's tear-rusted chains:
Heart that tied its iron fibers
 Round the Union's starry band;
Martyr's heart, that upward beating,
 Broke on hate's assassin hand!
Oh! the land he loved will miss him,
 Miss hint in its hour of need!
Mourns the nation for the nation
 Till its tear-drops inward bleed.
There is one whose life will mourn him,
 With a deep, unselfish woe;
One who owned him chief and master
 Ere the nation named him so.
That the land he loved will miss him,
 Does she either think or care?
No! the chieftain's heart is shrouded,
 And her woman's world was there:
No! the nation was her rival;
 Let its glory shine or dim,
He hath perished on its altar—
 What were many such to him?

     Toll! Toll!
     Toll! Toll!
  Never again—no more—
Comes back to earth the life that goes
  Hence to the Eden shore!

Let him rest!—it is not often
 That his soul hath known repose;
Let him rest!—they rest but seldom
 Whose successes challenge foes.
He was weary—worn with watching;
 His life-crown of power hath pressed
Oft on temples sadly aching—
 He was weary, let him rest.
Toll, bells at the Capital!
 Bells of the land, toll!
Sob out your grief with brazen lungs—
  Toll! toll! toll!