[ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
| No glittering chaplet brought from other lands! As in his life, this man, in death, is ours; His own loved prairies o'er his "gaunt, gnarled hands," Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers! What need hath he now of a tardy crown, His name from mocking jest and sneer to save When every plowman turns his furrow down As soft as though it fell upon his grave? He was a man whose like the world again Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise; The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign, Are battles, not the pomps of gala days! The grandest leader of the grandest war That ever time in history gave a place,— What were the tinsel flattery of a star To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace! 'Tis to th' man, and th' man's honest worth, The Nation's loyalty in tears upsprings; Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth, High o'er the silken broideries of kings. The mechanism of eternal forms— The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through— Were alien ways to him: his brawny arms Had other work than posturing to do! |
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
Photograph by Alexander Gardner, Washington, D. C., 1865
Rose Terry Cooke was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, February 17, 1827. Graduated at Hartford Female Seminary in 1843. She has written many short stories and a number of books of poems.
[ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
| Hundreds there have been, loftier than their kind, Heroes and victors in the world's great wars: Hundreds, exalted as the eternal stars, By the great heart, or keen and mighty mind; There have been sufferers, maimed and halt and blind, Who bore their woes in such triumphant calm That God hath crowned them with the martyr's palm; And there were those who fought through fire to find Their Master's face, and were by fire refined. But who like thee, oh Sire! hath ever stood Steadfast for truth and right, when lies and wrong Rolled their dark waters, turbulent and strong; Who bore reviling, baseness, tears and blood Poured out like water, till thine own was spent, Then reaped Earth's sole reward—a grave and monument! |