Not as when some great Captain falls
In battle, where his Country calls,
Beyond the struggling lines
That push his dread designs

To doom, by some stray ball struck dead:
Or, in the last charge, at the head
Of his determined men,
Who _must_ be victors then!

Nor as when sink the civic Great,
The safer pillars of the State,
Whose calm, mature, wise words
Suppress the need of swords--

With no such tears as e'er were shed
Above the noblest of our Dead
Do we to-day deplore
The Man that is no more!

Our sorrow hath a wider scope,
Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,--
A Wonder, blind and dumb,
That waits--what is to come!

Not more astounded had we been
If Madness, that dark night, unseen,
Had in our chambers crept,