Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OUR GOOD PRESIDENT, by PHOEBE CARY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Our sun hath gone down at the noon-day Last Line: With its great seal of blood! Subject(s): Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865); Presidents, United States | ||||||||
OUR sun hath gone down at the noonday, The heavens are black; And over the morning, the shadows Of night-time are back. Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon; Hush the mirth and the shout; -- God is God! and the ways of Jehovah Are past finding out. Lo! the beautiful feet on the mountains, That yesterday stood, The white feet that came with glad tidings Are dabbled in blood. The Nation that firmly was settling The crown on her head, Sits like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, And watches her dead. Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing, Is lying so low? O my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish, Do you feel, do you know, That the hand which reached out of the darkness Hath taken the whole; Yea, the arm and the head of the people, -- The heart and the soul? And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence A nation has wept; Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest, A man ever kept. Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields, The dark holds of ships Every faint, feeble cry which oppression Smothered down on men's lips. In her furnace, the centuries had welded Their fetter and chain; And like withes, in the hands of his purpose, He snapped them in twain. Who can be what he was to the people, -- What he was to the state? Shall the ages bring to us another As good and as great? Our hearts with their anguish are broken, Our wet eyes are dim; For us is the loss and the sorrow, The triumph for him! For, ere this, face to face with his Father Our martyr hath stood; Giving into his hand a white record, With its great seal of blood! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JOHN BROWN'S BODY by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS by JOHN HOLLANDER TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON INAUGURATION DAY: JANUARY 1953 by ROBERT LOWELL LINCOLN TRIUMPHANT by EDWIN MARKHAM YOUNG LINCOLN by EDWIN MARKHAM A MAN CHILD IS BORN (1809) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS AT SAGAMORE HILL by EDGAR LEE MASTERS BRUTUS LIVES AGAIN IN BOOTH by EDGAR LEE MASTERS A LEGEND OF THE NORTHLAND by PHOEBE CARY |
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