III. SOME TYPICAL EXAMPLES GIVING VIEWS OF LINCOLN’S LIFE
Vachel Lindsay invokes the spirit of American patriotism when he says,
“Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness,
From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,
About that breast of earth and prairie-fire—
Fire that freed the slave.”
Herr Loewes in the Prussian Parliament said: “Mr. Lincoln performed his duties without pomp or ceremony, and relied on that dignity of the inner self alone, which is far above rank, orders and titles. He was a faithful servant, not less of his own country than of civilization, freedom and humanity.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing of Lincoln’s death, said:
“Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold,
This martyr generation,
Which Thou, through trials manifold,
Art showing Thy salvation!
O let the blood by murder spilt
Wash out Thy stricken children’s guilt,
And sanctify our nation!”
Samuel Francis Smith, author of the national hymn, “America,” in a long poetic tribute wrote:
“Grandly he loved and lived;
Not his own age alone
Bears the proud impress of his sovereign mind.
Down the long march of history,
Ages and men shall see
What one great soul can be
What one great soul can do
To make a nation true.”
Horace Fiske closed a poem inspired by the Saint Gaudens statue, as follows:
“In human strength he towers almost divine,
His mighty shoulders bent with breaking care,
His thought-worn face with sympathies grown fine:
And as men gaze, their hearts as oft declare
That this is he whom all their hearts enshrine——
This man that saved a race from slow despair.”
Theodore Roosevelt said, in an address on the character of Lincoln, “One of his most wonderful characteristics was the extraordinary way in which he could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong, and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from whom he differed.”
Woodrow Wilson said, “There was no point at which life touched him that he did not speak back to it instantly its meaning.”
Sir Spencer Walpole says in his history, “Of all men born to the Anglo-Saxon race in the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln deserves the highest place in history.”