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,
