MY CAPTAIN!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every wrack, 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 firm 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 where my Captain lies,
Fallen, cold and dead.

[Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

By Lott Flannery, in front of the Court House, Washington Unveiled
April 16, 1868]

Henry de Garrs, of Sheffield, England, wrote these lines on the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. They were published in
England in 1889, and later in America, in the _Century_.

ON THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN

What dreadful rumor, hurtling o'er the sea,
Too monstrous for belief, assails our shore?
Men pause and question, Can such foul crime be?
Till lingering doubt may cling to hope no more.
Not when great Caesar weltered in his gore,
Nor since, in time, or circumstance, or place,
Hath crime so shook the World's great heart before.
O World! O World! of all thy records base,
Time wears no fouler scar on his time-smitten face.

A king of men, inured to hardy toil,
Rose truly royal up the steeps of life,
Till Europ