Not more astonished 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,-- To 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 Caesar's brow! No Caesar he, whom we lament, A man without a precedent, Sent it would seem, to do His work--and perish too! Not by the weary cares of state, The endless tasks, which will not wait, Which, often done in vain, Must yet be done again: Not in the dark, wild tide of war, Which rose so high, and rolled so far, Sweeping from sea to sea In awful anarchy:-- Four fateful years of mortal strife, Which slowly drained the nation's life, (Yet, for each drop that ran There sprang an armed man!) Not then;--but when by measures meet,-- By victory, and by defeat,-- By courage, patience, skill, The people's fixed "We will!" Had pierced, had crushed rebellion dead,-- Without a hand, without a head:-- At last, when all was well, He fell--O, how he fell! The time,--the place,--the stealing shape,-- The coward shot,--the swift escape,-- The wife,--the widow's scream,-- It is a hideous dream! A dream?--what means this pageant, then? These multitudes of solemn men, Who speak not when they meet, But throng the silent street? The flags half-mast, that late so high Flaunted at each new victory? (The stars no brightness shed, But bloody looks the red!) The black festoons that stretch for miles, And turn the streets to funeral aisles? (No house too poor to show The nation's badge of woe!) The cannon's sudden, sullen boom,-- The bells that toll of death and doom,-- The rolling of the drums,-- The dreadful car that comes? Cursed be the hand that fired the shot! The frenzied brain that hatched the plot! Thy country's father slain By thee, thou worse than Cain! Tyrants have fallen by such as thou, And good hath followed--may it now! (God lets bad instruments Produce the best events.) But he, the man we mourn to-day, No tyrant was: so mild a sway In one such weight who bore Was never known before! Cool should be he, of balanced powers. The ruler of a race like ours, Impatient, headstrong, wild,-- The man to guide the child! And this he was, who most unfit (So hard the sense of God to hit!) Did seem to fill his place. With such a homely face,--