After-Gleams

To-day a nation mourns her dead,
    Bowed with her grief’s o’erwhelming weight;
To-morrow she will lift her head,
    Proud of the worth that made him great.
True offspring of her giant womb,
    Strong nursling of her mighty breast,
A brave, broad nature, one in whom
    The sunrise mingles with the West;
The firmness of the granite hills,
    Meeting the boundless prairie’s breath,
With such a strength and grandeur fills
    Her manchild that he conquers death?

The long, keen martyrdom of pain
    Reveals that nature’s hidden gold,
As mountain torrents strew the plain
    With treasure that the ridges hold.
What boy, in poverty, unshod,
    But from the log-hut’s door may dare
To tred the path our hero trod,
    His fame, and e’en his fate to share!
What man in humblest walks may doubt
    That honest work and pure life, passed
In upward struggle, shall come out
    As visible nobleness at last!

Ah, me! Almost accusing fate,
    Almost denying Providence,
While prostrate millions supplicate,
    And heaven seems deaf, and God far hence!
We wipe the tear from faces pale,
    We lift the eyes still dim with woe,
To see the storm has rent the veil
    From God’s true witness here below!
One thought that bows a million heads,
    A million hearts one pulse that swells,
One hope and one despair that dreads
    The booming of the midnight bells, –
The reverent tenderness that breathes
    Above the white-haired mother now,
And crowns with honor’s fadeless wreaths
    The peerless wife’s Madonna brow;
And the deep sympathies that run
    Beneath the sea on chords of fire,
All cry: Humanity is one,
    One offspring of a pitying Sire!

So in the darkness we have light;
    The blossom of our gloomiest doubt
Is faith’s dove-brooding lily, white,
    Above a closing grave come out.
Oh, not in vain that grave to day
    Shall hide our hero’s wasted frame,
If in its darkest deep we lay
    All strife and bitterness of blame:
While North and South and East and West,
    Four pillars of our freedom’s throne,
Shall stand unjarring, to make blest
    The nations as they guard our own!