Produced by The University of Michigan's Making of America online book collection (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa/). ABRAHAM LINCOLN. An Horatian Ode. By Richard Henry Stoddard. New York: Bunce & Huntington, Publishers, 540 Broadway. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, By BUNCE & HUNTINGTON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Alvord, Printer. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Born, Feb. 12th, 1809. Assassinated, Good-Friday, April 14th, 1865. "Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence The life o' the building. * * * * * * * * * * "Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon:--Do not bid me speak; See, and then speak yourselves.--Awake! awake! Ring the alarum-bell:--Murder! and treason! * * * * * * * * * * "Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, And look on death itself!--up, up, and see The great doom's image! * * * * * * * * * * "Our royal master's murdered! * * * * * * * * * * "Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of. * * * "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further." Macbeth. Not as when some great Captain falls In battle, where his Country calls, Beyond the struggling lines That push his dread designs To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: Or, in the last charge, at the head Of his determined men, Who _must_ be victors then! Nor as when sink the civic Great, The safer pillars of the State, Whose calm, mature, wise words Suppress the need of swords-- With no such tears as e'er were shed Above the noblest of our Dead Do we to-day deplore The Man that is no more! Our sorrow hath a wider scope, Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,-- A Wonder, blind and dumb, That waits--what is to come! Not more astounded had we been If Madness, that dark night, unseen, Had in our chambers crept, And murdered while we slept! We woke to find a mourning Earth-- Our Lares shivered on the hearth,-- The roof-tree fallen,--all That could affright, appall! Such thunderbolts, in other lands, Have smitten the rod from royal hands, But spared, with us, till now, Each laurelled Cesar's brow! No Cesar he, whom we lament, A Man without a precedent, Sent, it would see, to do His work--and perish too!