Poems (Odom)/Our Dead President
OUR DEAD PRESIDENT.
The sound of muffled drums is heard, The dull boom of the minute-gunBreaks on the sunlit morning air; The tale is told—the deed is done.
A nation's mighty pulse is stirred With grief and sorrow, all too deepTo find expression save in tears; In sacred silence let us weep,—
Weep for our chieftain's head laid low Before the vile assassin's thrust;A country's hope in fair, fresh flower Down-trodden to the very dust.
The world looks on with bated breath, And shrinks affrighted from the blowThat spread the pall of death abroad, And draped the whole fair land with woe;
Crashing its way through every heart, Filling the sternest soul with gloom,Till North and South, in common grief, Clasp hands above his open tomb.
Binding the fragrant immortelles Of deathless sorrow wet with tears,To wreathe around his "storied urn," And bloom in all the future years.
Each tender woman's heart must feel Some pang for her who mourns to-dayThe breaking of her dearest ties, Life's proudest honors snatched away.
The desolation that o'erspreads This land to its remotest part,Is lost beside the mighty grief That sits within her widowed heart.
The world that crowned him with its bays May cherish him with fleeting thought,But all her life will wear the trace Of this sad ruin fate has wrought.
For her we bend the suppliant knee In simple, tearful, earnest prayer,That she may trust the Chastening Arm, And find a Christian's comfort there.
Galveston, September 19, 1881.