Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "A Great Man’s Death," (1865):

Today a god died. Never any more
Shall man look on him. Never any more,
In hall or senate, shall his eloquent voice
Give hope to a sick nation. In his prime
Not all the world could daunt him; yet a ghost,
A poor mute ghost, a something we call Death,
Has silenced him forever. Let the land
Look for his peer: he has not yet been found.
A callow bird, of not so many days
As there are leaves upon the wildling rose,
Chirps from yon sycamore; this violet
Sprung up an hour since from the fibrous earth:
At noon the rain fell, and to-night the sun
Will sink with its old grandeur in the sea,--
And yet to-day a god died . . . Nature smiles
On our mortality. A sparrow’s death,
Or the unnoticed falling of a leaf,
Is more to her than when a great man dies!