Classic Poem

Who did it? Could it be a madman's act?
Yet there were others marked for similar doom —
His counsellors of state, his battle-chiefs,
His faithful partners in the great redemption.
Could it be issuance from the pits of Hell
Headed by demons round the seats of power,
A huge conspiracy — this part performed?
Yet he who did the deed, madman or fiend,
Effrontery's incarnation and dispatch,
Joined with the act Virginia's ancient phrase,
The motto of Lee's own loved Commonwealth,
Upon her Seal and in her people's hearts —
" Sic Semper Tyrannis! " — Oh the shame of it!
Out of the Old Dominion rose indeed
A host in arms waging an open war;
But never from Virginia, his Virginia,
The beauteous mother of heroic sons,
Could come such foul degenerates of hate.
Who did it? Not Virginia nor the South.
And yet the slayer cried above the slain,
" The South is avenged! " Alas the infamy,
The diabolic lie! Out of the South
Poured blood for independence, not revenge;
Sank life for civic faith, not malediction.

Lee's nature was on torture's ponderous wheel.
Through every chamber of his harrowed mind
Interrogations trooped, discordant tongues
Clamored within him and would not be hushed, —
The while he voiced abhorrence vehement,
His reason's censure and his heart's regret,
Clearly and sternly in the midst of men —
The while was sounded o'er the anguished land,
As with a trumpet from an outraged host,
The South's rejection and denouncement loud
Of the arch-crime and the Hell-hatch of it —
Arch-crime Hell-hatched by minds in Stygian bonds —
Projected seizure of the President,
Handcuffs and chains and prison swamps afar
Down in the Carolina marshes fixed,
Threatenings of execution following
The ransom price of deed demoniac
Refused, together with Confederate claims.
But on a sudden the arch-murder came
Before the enslavement of the Nation's Chief;
And all the Nation heard, and the far cry
Above the world's prolonged anathemas
Lingers along the highway of the ages.

At last by that refined and psychic sense
Which feels the oracles behind the veils,
The invisible interpreters of fate,
Lee in one flash of high enlightenment
Perceived the murderer and his deed of hate,
The son of Belial, chosen of the Abyss,
Composite onslaught of ten thousand fiends
Incarnate in a new Iscariot.
'Twas Slavery's last blow at Liberty
Ere it crept back into the bosom of Hell.
'Twas crushed Rebellion's final venomed sting
Ere it went writhing down red dust to death.