Эдмунд Кларенс Стедман (Edmund Clarence Stedman)

Wanted—A Man

Back from the trebly crimsoned field
⁠     Terrible words are thunder-tost;
Full of the wrath that will not yield,
⁠     Full of revenge for battles lost!
⁠Hark to their echo, as it crost
     The Capital, making faces wan:
⁠"End this murderous holocaust;
     Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!

"Give us a man of God's own mould,
     ⁠Born to marshal his fellow-men;
One whose fame is not bought and sold
     ⁠At the stroke of a politician's pen;
⁠Give us the man of thousands ten,
     Fit to do as well as to plan;
⁠Give us a rallying-cry, and then,
     Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!

"No leader to shirk the boasting foe,
⁠     And to march and countermarch our brave,
Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low,
⁠     And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave;
⁠Nor another, whose fatal banners wave
     Aye in Disaster's shameful van;
⁠Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave;—
     Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!

"Hearts are mourning in the North,
     ⁠While the sister rivers seek the main,
Red with our life-blood flowing forth,—
     ⁠Who shall gather it up again?
⁠Though we march to the battle-plain
     Firmly as when the strife began,
⁠Shall all our offering be in vain?—
     Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!

"Is there never one in all the land,
⁠     One on whose might the Cause may lean?
Are all the common ones so grand,
⁠     And all the titled ones so mean?
⁠What if your failure may have been
     In trying to make good bread from bran,
⁠From worthless metal a weapon keen?—
     Abraham Lincoln, find us a man!

"O, we will follow him to the death,
     ⁠Where the foeman's fiercest columns are!
O, we will use our latest breath,
⁠     Cheering for every sacred star!
⁠His to marshal us high and far;
     Ours to battle, as patriots can
⁠When a Hero leads the Holy War!—
     Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!" 

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