each side of the lanes,
       passing the endless grass,
    Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from
      its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
    Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the
      orchards,
    Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
    Night and day journeys a coffin.

    Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
    Through day and night with the great cloud darkening
      the land,
    With the pomp of the inloop’d flags, with the cities
      draped in black,
    With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d
      women standing,
    With processions long and winding and the flambeaus
      of the night,
    With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of
      faces and the unbared heads,
    With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the
      sombre faces,
    With dirges through the night, with the thousand
      voices rising strong and solemn,
    With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d
      around the coffin,
    The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—­
    With the tolling, tolling bells’ perpetual clang.

At the principal cities delays were made to enable the people to pay their tribute of respect to the remains of their beloved President.  Through Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, the train passed to New York City, where a magnificent funeral was held; thence along the shore of the Hudson river to Albany, thence westward through the principal cities of New York, Ohio, and Northern Indiana, the cortege wended its solemn way, reaching, on the 1st of May, the city of Chicago.  Here very extensive preparations for funeral obsequies had been made by the thousands who had known him in his life, and other thousands who had learned to love him and now mourned his death.

On the 3d of May the funeral train reached Springfield, where old friends and neighbors tenderly received the dust of their beloved dead.  Funeral services were held, and for twenty-four hours the catafalque remained in the hall of the House, where thousands of tear-dimmed eyes gazed for the last time upon the familiar face.  Then, on the morning of the 4th of May, a sorrowing procession escorted the remains to the beautiful grounds of Oak Ridge Cemetery, to rest at last from the care and tumult of a troubled life.  To this hallowed spot have come the gray-haired soldiers of that stormy war, reverently to salute their great commander’s tomb.  Here shall long be paid the loving homage of the dusky race that he redeemed.  And pilgrims from every land, who value human worth and human liberty, bring here their tributes of respect.  And here, while the Government that he saved endures, shall throng his patriot countrymen, not idly to lament his loss, but to resolve that from this honored dead they take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion; that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.