And murdered while we slept!

We woke to find a mourning Earth--
Our Lares shivered on the hearth,--
The roof-tree fallen,--all
That could affright, appall!

Such thunderbolts, in other lands,
Have smitten the rod from royal hands,
But spared, with us, till now,
Each laurelled Cesar's brow!

No Cesar he, whom we lament,
A Man without a precedent,
Sent, it would see, to do
His work--and perish too!

Not by the weary cares of State,
The endless tasks, which will not wait,
Which, often done in vain,
Must yet be done again:

Not in the dark, wild tide of War,
Which rose so high, and rolled so far,
Sweeping from sea to sea
In awful anarchy:--

Four fateful years of mortal strife,
Which slowly drained the Nation's life,
(Yet, for each drop that ran