University of Virginia Library

I.

In the last quarter of this century—
This grand, electric-lighted century—
This steam-propelled, far-speaking century—
That called the idle vapors to their work,
Made giants of them, gave them arms of steel,
And made them toil ere to their sport returned—
That caught the fire-fly lightnings on the wing,
And caged them into lamps that kill the dark—
Century that confirms the Arabian Nights—
Century with the blossom and the fruit
Of eons that have grown through tears and blood—
Century to be quoted as that one
Wherein Man first declared by deed that he
Was emperor of all the elements;
This quick-nerved, high-strung nineteenth century,
That found new hideous ways for War to use
In killing, and thus made Peace fashionable;
This century that soon, with toll of bell,
And trumpet-peal, and boom of brazen gun,
And shouts of men, half joyful and half sad,
Shall close its clanging gate for evermore—
It is not strange that we should wonder oft
What legends maybe will be told of us
In the strange, silent century next to come.
In the new, waiting years so soon to come—
When boys that now sport laughing in the streets
Shall be grave grandsires, wondering at the glee
Of frivolous boys, and making dividends
With their grim silent partner—Rheumatism;
When tiny girls, now perching on our knees,
Become old ladies, dignified and prim;
When “Eighteen hundred” shall a memory be,
And “Nineteen hundred” sound like old friends' names—
Perchance the children may some legends hear
Of this last quarter of this century:
Tell them of Grant's too-soon pathetic death.
How the old chief so silently encamped
In the King-city—two long mournful days,
And the weird mournful nights that flitted round;
How past his solemn bed sad thousands marched
To see him, ere the coverlid was drawn
O'er his pale face forever; how at last
His great black hearse crept up the broad highway
'Twixt marble palaces thick cloaked in crape,
And crowded close with hushed and bowing forms;
How clans that late had sought each other's blood
Now arm in arm marched with the conqueror;
And how the requiem guns that greeted him
At his half-made but some day gorgeous tent
Shook not the city more than did its grief.
Tell this to them—although may be forgotten
Amid the century's whirl—this funeral-song:

THE CAPTAIN IS ASLEEP.