Hear the wind roar, And the rain through the slit sails tear and pour! "Steady! we'll scud by the Cape Ann shore,-- Then hark to the Beverly bells once more!" And each man worked with the will of ten; While up in the rigging, now and then, The lightning glared in the face of Ben, Turned to the black horizon's rim, Scowling on him.
Into his brain Burned with the iron of hopeless pain, Into thoughts that grapple and eyes that strain, Pierces the memory, cruel and vain! Never again shall he walk at ease Under his blossoming apple-trees That whisper and sway in the sunset-breeze, While the soft eyes float where the sea-gulls skim, Gazing with him.
How they went down Never was known in the still old town: Nobody guessed how the fisherman brown, With the look of despair that was half a frown, Faced his fate in the furious night, Faced the mad billows with hunger white, Just within hail of the beacon-light, That shone on a woman sweet and trim, Waiting for him.
Beverly bells, Ring to the tide as it ebbs and swells! His was the anguish a moment tells,-- The passionate sorrow Death quickly knells; But the wearing wash of a lifelong woe Is left for the desolate heart to know, Whose tides with the dull years come and go, Till hope drifts dead to its stagnant brim, Thinking of him.
The assassination of President Lincoln threw a whole nation into mourning,--the few exceptions to those who deplored the President's violent and untimely end only serving to make the general regret the more manifest. Of all our Presidents since Washington, Mr. Lincoln had excited the smallest amount of that feeling which places its object in personal danger. He was a man who made a singularly favorable impression on those who approached him, resembling in that respect President Jackson, who often made warm friends of bitter foes, when circumstances had forced them to seek his presence; and it is probable, that, if he and the honest chiefs of the Rebels could have been brought face to face, there never would have been civil war,--at least, any contest of grand proportions; for he would not have failed to convince them that all that they had any right to claim, and therefore all that they could expect their fellow-citizens to fight for would be more secure under his government than it had been under the governments of such men as Pierce and Buchanan, who made use of sectionalism and slavery to promote the selfish interests of themselves and their party. The estimation in which he was latterly held by the most intelligent of the Secessionists indicates, that, had they been acquainted with him, their Secessionism never would have got beyond the nullification of the Palmetto Nullifiers; and that was all fury and fuss, without any fighting in it. Ignorance was the parent of the civil war, as it has been the parent of many other evils,--ignorance of the character and purpose of the man who was chosen President in 1860-61, and who entered upon official life with less animosity toward his opponents than ever before or since had been felt by a man elected to a great place after a bitter and exciting contest. There is not the slightest reason for doubting the sincerity of Mr. Lincoln's declaration, that his administration should be Constitutional in its character; nor can it be said that the earlier Rebels ever supposed that he would invade their Constitutional rights. They rebelled because circumstances enabled them to attempt the realization of their long-cherished dream of a slave-holding Confederacy, and because they saw that never again, in their time, would another such opportunity be offered to effect a traitorous purpose. It was clear to every mind that a year of quiet under the new administration would dispel the delusion that the North was about to overthrow the old polity; and therefore the violent men of the South were determined that that administration never should have a fair trial. Their action at Charleston, in 1860, by rendering the election of the Republican candidate certain, shows that they wished an occasion for revolt; and the course of President Buchanan, who refused to take the commonest precautions for the public safety, gave them a vantage-ground which they speedily occupied, and so made war inevitable.