Bow while the body passes--nay, Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray! Weep, weep--I would ye might-- Your poor, black faces white! And children, you must come in bands, With garlands in your little hands, Of blue, and white, and red, To strew before the dead! So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes The fallen to his last repose: Beneath no mighty dome. But in his modest home; The churchyard where his children rest, The quiet spot that suits him best: There shall his grave be made, And there his bones be laid! And there his countrymen shall come, With memory proud, with pity dumb, And strangers far and near, For many and many a year! For many a year, and many an age, While history on her ample page The virtues shall enroll Of that paternal soul! [21] _By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ SOME FOREIGN TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN From "The Lives and Deeds of Our Self-made Men"[22] BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1889) On the first of May, 1865, Sir George Grey, in the English House of Commons, moved an address to the Crown, to express the feelings of the House upon the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. In this address he said that he was convinced that Mr. Lincoln "in the hour of victory, and in the triumph of victory, would have shown that wise forbearance, and that generous consideration, which would have added tenfold lustre to the fame that he had already acquired, amidst the varying fortunes of the war." In seconding the second address, at the same time and place, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli said: "But in the character of the victim, and in the very accessories of his almost latest moments, there is something so homely and so innocent that it takes the subject, as it were, out of the pomp of history, and out of the ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind." In the House of Lords, Lord John Russell, in moving a similar address, observed: "President Lincoln was a man who, although he had not been distinguished before his election, had from that time displayed a character of so much integrity, sincerity and straightforwardness, and at the same time of so much kindness, that if any one could have been able to alleviate the pain and animosity which have prevailed during the civil war, I believe President Lincoln was the man to have done so." And again, in speaking of the question of amending the Constitution so as to prohibit slavery, he said: "We must all feel that there again the death of President Lincoln deprives the United States of the man who was the leader on this subject."