[NANCY HANKS]
| Prairie Child, Brief as dew, What winds of wonder Nourished you? Rolling plain Of billowy green, Fair horizons, Blue, serene. Lofty skies The slow clouds climb, Where burning stars Beat out the time. [top] These, and the dreams Of fathers bold, Baffled longings Hopes untold. Gave to you A heart of fire, Love like waters, Brave desire. Ah, when youth's rapture Went out in pain, And all seemed over, Was all in vain? O soul obscure, Whose wings life bound, And soft death folded Under the ground. Wilding lady, Still and true, Who gave us Lincoln And never knew: To you at last Our praise, our tears, Love and a song Through the nation's years. Mother of Lincoln, Our tears, our praise; A battle-flag And the victor's bays! |
THE RAIL SPLITTER
From the "Footprints of Abraham Lincoln"
[LINCOLN THE LABORER]
From an Horatian Ode by Richard Henry Stoddard
| A laboring man with horny hands, Who swung the axe, who tilled the lands, Who shrank from nothing new, But did as poor men do. One of the people. Born to be Their curious epitome, To share, yet rise above, Their shifting hate and love. Common his mind, it seemed so then, His thoughts the thoughts of other men, Plain were his words, and poor— But now they will endure. No hasty fool of stubborn will, But prudent, cautious, still— Who, since his work was good, Would do it as he could. No hero, this, of Roman mold— Nor like our stately sires of old. Perhaps he was not great— But he preserved the state. O, honest face, which all men knew, O, tender heart, but known to few— O, wonder of the age, Cut off by tragic rage. |