O jubilant bells! O glorious bells!
That rung in the land of the free,
When the galling bands on a brother’s hands
Were broken in ’63,
Where is your once glad tone?
O jubilant bells! O glorious bells!
That rung in the land of the brave;
In the gladsome hour when the tyrant’s power,
Where is your music gone?
Ye are muffled now! Toll a sorrowful peal,
While the nation bows its head;
Let it sound on the air, like a groan of despair,
Wailing a Father dead.
Ye have done a fearful crime;
And the price ye pay in his death to-day
Shall meet you throughout all time.
Ye have gazed on a brother when bound in chains,
But a reckoning hour has come;
And the dreadful price of the sacrifice,
Is the life-blood of every home.
Your greatest is gone: an assassin’s deed!
Will a curse not cling, like a baleful thing,
To the hand that laid him low?
Could he not be spared who had striven so long,
‘Mid scoffing, affliction, and tears,
To enjoy the calm, and the healing balm
Of peaceful, declining years!
How nobly he stood! How defiant and brave!
A bulwark of honest might,
When the storm of thunder, which rent asunder
Equality, truth, and right, -
Came sweeping along with a crushing force,
With its fierce and deadly yell,
Wasting the land with a fiery hand,
Making a heaven a hell.
And is it not hard that this valiant man,
With soul so noble and free, -
Who struggled so long, with a purpose strong,
Striving for liberty, -
Should fall by a miscreant’s murderous blow,
Just when the fair olive wand
Of peace gleamed afar, while the banners of war
Were ceasing to wave in the land!
What a fearful reward for years of toil!
For toil in the cause of the slave;
Instead of a wreath, ‘tis a horrid death,
And a home in the noisome grave.
A horrid death! No! ‘Tis a noble one,
For he met a martyr’s doom;
And the flowery fame of his deathless name
Shall glow with celestial bloom.
O people that grieve for the loss of your chief,
Let your hearts be his sacred shrine;
Like the heroes of old, let his deeds be told
Till he seem to you half divine,
Add his name to the roll of the world’s true braves,
They who died with harness on;
Let the toll of his bell sound slavery’s knell,
Proclaiming his task is done.
Ring a sorrowful peal ye muffled bells!
While the nation bows its head;
Let it sound on the air, like a groan of despaiir,
Wailing a Father dead!