But he is gone. The conqueror at last is conquered. The fruits of his labor, his name, his memory and example, are all that is left us--his example, verifying the great truth that "he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted"--teaching that to serve one's country with a singleness of purpose gives assurances of that country's gratitude, secures its best honors, and makes "a dying bed, soft as downy pillows are."
The death of the last President may not be without its use, in reminding us that we, too, must die. Death, abstractly considered, is the same with the high as with the low; but practically we are not so much aroused by the contemplation of our own mortal natures, by the fall of many undistinguished, as that of one great and well-known name. By the latter, we are forced to muse, and ponder sadly,
"O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed, That withers away, to let others succeed; So the multitude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are same that our fathers have been; We see the same sights our fathers have seen,-- We drink the same streams, and see the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run.
They loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come; They rejoiced, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
They died! Aye, they died. We, things that are now, That work on the turf that lies on their brow And make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain Are mingled together in sunshine and rain-- And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge Still follow each other like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health, to the paleness of death-- From the gilded saloon, to the bier and the shroud, O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address, by Abraham Lincoln