I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he; He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These are all gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American. [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN By Leonard W. Volk] Richard Henry Stoddard, born in Hingham, Massachusetts, July 2, 1825. His first book, entitled _Foot Prints_, was published in 1849, and some three years after a more mature collection of poems was published. In later years a number of his books were published, all of which have been received with approbation by the public. Died May 12, 1903. AN HORATIAN ODE (_To Lincoln_) 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 today 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 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!