those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips,
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men.

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high,
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt
If more of horror or disgrace they bore;
But thy foul crime, like CAIN'S stands darkly out.

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven;
And with the martyr's crown crownest a life
With much to praise, little to be forgiven!

[Illustration: DEATHBED OF LINCOLN]

Immediately after the President was shot in Ford's Theatre he was
carried across the street to the house of William Petersen and placed
on a single bed in a room at the end of the hall. All through that
weary night the watchers stood by the bedside. He was unconscious
every moment from the time the bullet entered his head until Dr.
Robert King Stone, the family physician, announced at twenty-two
minutes after seven on the following morning that he had breathed his
last (April 15, 1865). Upon this Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary
of War, in a low voice said: "_Now He Belongs to the Ages_."

THE DEATHBED

Silence falls, unbroken save by sobs of strong men
In that room, where Lincoln, at the morning hour's chime
Passed out into the unknown from the world of human ken.
Gone his body and his life work from the world inclosed by time;
But in the silence that was falling after breath of broken prayer,
Words eternal broke the quiet like a bell toll on the air;
Never in the world's wide story, wiser spoke nor Prophet, spoke nor
Sages,
Than these words that broke the silence: "He belongs now to the Ages!"

"To the Ages!" well you spoke it, Stanton of the massive mind!
He belongs, the years have shown it, to the world of human kind!
Heard his story, where'er hearts throb o'er the world's far spreading
wa