Lincoln Day Entertainments - Various

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Rose-red and blood-red

       The stripes forever gleam;

       Snow-white and soul-white—

       The good forefather's dream;

       Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright—

       The gloried guidon of the day; a shelter through the night.

       Your Flag and my Flag!

       And, oh, how much it holds—

       Your land and my land—

       Secure within its folds!

       Your heart and my heart

       Beat quicker at the sight;

       Sun-kissed and wind-tossed,

       Red and blue and white.

       The one Flag—the great Flag—the Flag for me and you—

       Glorified all else beside—the red and white and blue!

       Your Flag and my Flag!

       To every star and stripe

       The drums beat as hearts beat

       And fifers shrilly pipe!

       Your Flag and my Flag—

       A blessing in the sky;

       Your hope and my hope—

       It never hid a lie!

       Home land and far land and half the world around,

       Old Glory hears our glad salute and ripples to the sound!

      THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

      Charles G. Halpin

      HE FILLED the nation's eye and heart,

       An honored, loved, familiar name,

       So much a brother that his fame

       Seemed of our lives a common part.

       His towering figure, sharp and spare,

       Was with such nervous tension strung,

       As if on each strained sinew swung

       The burden of a people's care.

       He was his country's, not his own;

       He had no wish but for her weal;

       Not for himself could think or feel,

       But as a laborer for her throne.

       O, loved and lost! thy patient toil

       Had robed our cause in Victory's light;

       Our country stood redeemed and bright,

       With not a slave on all her soil.

       A martyr to the cause of man,

       His blood is freedom's eucharist,

       And in the world's great hero list,

       His name shall lead the van.

      O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

      Walt Whitman

      Abraham Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth, almost exactly four years after the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter. This song and Edwin Markham's poem on Lincoln are two of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero.

      O CAPTAIN! my Captain! Our fearful trip is done,

       The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

       The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

       While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

       But O heart! heart! heart!

       O the bleeding drops of red,

       Where on the deck my Captain lies,

       Fallen cold and dead!

       O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

       Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

       For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

       For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

       Here, Captain! dear father!

       This arm beneath your head!

       It is some dream that on the deck

       You've fallen cold and dead.

       My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

       My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

       The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

       From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

       Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

       But I, with mournful tread,

       Walk the deck my Captain lies,

       Fallen cold and dead.

      ABRAHAM LINCOLN

      Joel Benton

      SOME opulent force of genius, soul, and race,

       Some deep life-current from far centuries

       Flowed to his mind and lighted his sad eyes,

       And gave his name, among great names, high place.

       But these are miracles we may not trace,

       Nor say why from a source and lineage mean

       He rose to grandeur never dreamt or seen

       Or told on the long scroll of history's space.

       The tragic fate of one broad hemisphere

       Fell on stern days to his supreme control,

       All that the world and liberty held dear

       Pressed like a nightmare on his patient soul.

       Martyr beloved, on whom, when life was done,

       Fame looked, and saw another Washington!

      ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

      Richard Watson Gilder

      THIS bronze doth keep the very form and mold

       Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:

       That brow all wisdom, all benignity;

       That human humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold

       Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;

       That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea

       For storms to beat on; the lone agony

       Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.

       Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men

       As might some prophet of the elder day—

       Brooding above the tempest and the fray

       With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.

       A power was his beyond the touch of art

       Or armed strength—his pure and mighty heart.

      ABRAHAM LINCOLN

      James Russell Lowell

      This is a fragment of the noble Commemoration Ode delivered at Harvard College to the memory of those of its students who fell in the war which kept the country whole.

      SUCH was he, our Martyr-Chief,

       Whom late the Nation he had led,

       With ashes on her head,

       Wept with the passion of an angry grief:

       Forgive me, if from present things I turn

       To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,

       And hang my wreath on this world-honored urn.

      

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