All that it was possible for men to do in battle they have done. Let us hope for perpetual peace and harmony with that enemy whose manhood, however mistaken the cause, drew forth such Herculean deeds of valor. [_The bloody light fades and the two armies spread out into the crowds which now slowly close in._] LINCOLN With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right; let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. [_The darkness has gradually closed in upon the scene except for Freedom’s face._ _A great toll of the kettledrums and a voice of a man that cries out desperately in the darkness._] THE VOICE Sic semper tyrannis! [_The answer is a wail of women._] A SECOND VOICE (_Again a man’s; more calm and tragic._) Now he belongs to the ages. [_Again the wail of women._] FREEDOM O Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln! [_With this, a shaft of light strikes the stair and shows Freedom bending over a bier upon which Lincoln lies dead._ _A great cry of mourning rises from the crowd, both men and women._ _The Choir comments, speaking Walt Whitman’s verse and noble words._] THE CHOIR This dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of these States. [_Gradually, during these lines, a cold light has spread over the mourning multitude. Every vestige of war is gone. The people stand with drooping heads facing the stair, every hand holding a spray of lilac. The freed negroes kneel about the lower steps. A funeral march, gentle as a song of spring, begins. Men lift up the bier and carry it up the steps to the second landing. Freedom leads the cortege; the girls come after. The crowd closes in. At the second landing, the bier is set down and all the people go past it, filing out into the darkness which closes in again upon either side. In the meanwhile, over the music, Freedom and the two Spokesmen speak from Walt Whitman’s great song of mourning._] FREEDOM When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourned and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night--O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d--O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless--O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. THE FIRST SPOKESMAN