Chapter II: Introduction: The Poetic Spirit of Lincoln (1)

By MARION MILLS MILLER

(See biographical sketch on page 146)

Some years ago, while editing Henry C. Whitney's "Life of Lincoln" I showed a photograph of the bust of Lincoln by Johannes Gelert, the most intellectual to my mind of all the studies of his face, to a little Italian shoeblack, and asked him if he knew who it was. The boy, evidently prompted by a recent lesson at school, said questioningly, "Whittier?--Longfellow?" I replied, "No, it is Lincoln, the great President." He answered, "Well, he looks like a poet, anyway."

This verified a conclusion to which I had already come: Lincoln, had he lived in a region of greater culture, such as New England, might not have adopted the engrossing pursuits of law and politics, but, as did Whittier, have remained longer on the farm and gradually taken up the calling of letters, composing verse of much the same order as our Yankee bards', and poetry of even higher merit than some produced.

It is not generally known that Lincoln, shortly before he went to Congress, wrote verse of a kind to compare favorably with the early attempts of American poets such as those named. Thus the two poems of his which have been preserved, for his early lampoons on his neighbors have happily been lost, are equal in poetic spirit and metrical art to Whittier's "The Prisoner for Debt," to which they are strikingly similar in melancholic mood.

In 1846, at the age of 37, Lincoln conducted a literary correspondence with a friend, William Johnson by name, of like poetic tastes. In April of this year he wrote the following letter to Johnson:

Tremont, April 18, 1846.

FRIEND JOHNSTON: Your letter, written some six weeks since,
was received in due course, and also the paper with the
parody. It is true, as suggested it might be, that I have
never seen Poe's "Raven"; and I very well know that a parody
is almost entirely dependent for its interest upon the
reader's acquaintance with the original. Still there is
enough in the polecat, self-considered, to afford one
several hearty laughs. I think four or five of the last
stanzas are decidedly funny, particularly where Jeremiah
"scrubbed and washed, and prayed and fasted."

I have not your letter now before me; but, from memory, I
think you ask me who is the author of the piece I sent you,
and that you do so ask as to indicate a slight suspicion
that I myself am the author. Beyond all question, I am not
the author. I would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to
be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is. Neither
do I know who is the author. I met it in a straggling form
in a newspaper last summer, and I remember to have seen it
once before, about fifteen years ago, and this is all I know
about it.

The piece of poetry of my own which I alluded to, I was led
to write under the following circumstances. In the fall of
1844, thinking I might aid some to carry the State of
Indiana for Mr. Clay, I went into the neighborhood in that
State in which I was raised, where my mother and only sister
were buried, and from which I had been absent about fifteen
years.

That part of the country is, within itself, as unpoetical as
any spot of the earth; but still, seeing it and its objects
and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly
poetry; though whether my expression of those feelings is
poetry is quite another question. When I got to writing,
the change of subject divided the thing into four little
divisions or cantos, the first only of which I send you now,
and may send the others hereafter.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-notes that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray;
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

In September he wrote the following letter:

Springfield, September 6, 1846.

FRIEND JOHNSTON: You remember when I wrote you from Tremont
last spring, sending you a little canto of what I called
poetry, I promised to bore you with another some time. I now
fulfil the promise. The subject of the present one is an
insane man; his name is Matthew Gentry. He is three years
older than I, and when we were boys we went to school
together. He was rather a bright lad, and the son of the
rich man of a very poor neighborhood. At the age of
nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which
condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity.
When, as I told you in my other letter, I visited my old
home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in
this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood, I could not
forget the impression his case made upon me. Here is the
result:

But here's an object more of dread
Than aught the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

When terror spread, and neighbors ran
Your dangerous strength to bind,
And soon, a howling, crazy man,
Your limbs were fast confined;

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd
With burning eyeballs glared;

And begged and swore, and wept and prayed,
With maniac laughter joined;
How fearful were these signs displayed
By pangs that killed the mind!

And when at length the drear and long
Time soothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose!

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet and lone,
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

To drink its strains I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising god of day
Had streaked the eastern hill.

Air held her breath; trees with the spell
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past, and naught remains
That raised thee o'er the brute:
Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strains
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well! More thou the cause
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs by time's kind laws
Hast lost the power to know.

O death! thou awe-inspiring prince
That keepst the world in fear,
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him lingering here?

If I should ever send another, the subject will be a "Bear
Hunt."

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.

The poem alluded to in the first letter is undoubtedly "Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?", by William Knox, a Scottish poet, known to fame only by its authorship. It remained the favorite of Lincoln until his death, being frequently alluded to by him in conversation with his friends. Because it so aptly presents Lincoln's own spirit it is here presented in full. During his Presidency he said:

"There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for
years, which was first shown me when a young man by a friend,
and which I afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper and
learned by heart. I would give a good deal to know who wrote
it, but I have never been able to ascertain."

Then, half closing his eyes, he repeated the verses:

OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL
BE PROUD?

By WILLIAM KNOX.

William Knox was born at Firth, in the parish of
Lilliesleaf, in the county of Roxburghshire, on the 17th of
August, 1789. From his early youth he composed verses. He
merited the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who afforded him
pecuniary assistance. He died November 12, 1825, at the age
of thirty-six.

Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
The flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high
Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved,
The mother that infant's affection who proved,
The husband that mother and infant who blest,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by;
And the mem'ry of those who loved her and praised
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep,
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes like the flower or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed,
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same that our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same streams, and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think,
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling,
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.

They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died, ay, they died. We things that are now,
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
And make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain:
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other like surge upon surge.

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud,--
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

"The Last Leaf," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was also a favorite poem of Lincoln, says Henry C. Whitney, his friend and biographer (in his "Life of Lincoln," Vol. I, page 238):

"Over and over again I have heard him repeat:

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

and tears would come unbidden to his eyes, probably at thought of the grave (his mother's) at Gentryville, or that in the bend of the Sangamo" (of Ann Rutledge, his first love, who died shortly before the time set for their wedding, and whose memory Lincoln ever kept sacred).

While Lincoln, so far as can be ascertained, wrote nothing in verse after 1846, he developed in his speeches a literary style which is poetical in the highest sense of that term. More than all American statesmen his utterances and writings possess that classic quality whose supreme expression is found in Greek literature. This is because Lincoln had an essentially Hellenic mind. First of all the architecture of his thought was that of the Greek masters, who, whether as Phidias they built the Parthenon to crown with harmonious beauty the Acropolis, or as Homer they recorded in swelling narrative from its dramatic beginning the strife of the Achaeans before Troy, or even as Euclid, they developed from postulates the relations of space, had a deep insight into the order in which mother nature was striving to express herself, and a reverent impulse to aid her in bodying forth according to her methods the ideal forms of the cosmos, the world of beauty, no less within the soul of man than without it, which was intended by such help to be realized as a whole in the infinity of time, and in part in the vision of every true workman. In short, Lincoln had a profound sense of the fitness of things, that which Aristotle, the scientific analyst of human thought and the philosopher of its proper expression, called "poetic justice." He strove to make his reasoning processes strictly logical, and to this end carried with him as he rode the legal circuit not law-books, but a copy of Euclid's geometry, and passed his time on the way demonstrating to his drivers the theorems therein proposed. "Demonstrate" he said he considered to be the greatest word in the English language. He constructed every one of his later speeches on the plan of a Euclidean solution. His Cooper Union speech on "Slavery as the Fathers Viewed It," which contributed so largely to his Presidential nomination, was such a demonstration, settling what was thereafter never attempted to be controverted: his contention that the makers of the Constitution merely tolerated property in human flesh and blood as a primitive and passing phase of civilization, and never intended that it should be perpetuated by the charter of the Republic.

So, too, the Gettysburg speech, brief as it is, is the statement of a thesis, the principles upon which the Fathers founded the nation, and of the heroic demonstration of the same by the soldiers fallen on the field, and the addition of a moral corollary of this, the high resolve of the living to prosecute the work until the vision of the Fathers was realized.

In substance of thought and in form of its presentation the speech is as perfect a poem as ever was written, and even in the minor qualities of artistic language--rhythm and cadence, phonetic euphony, rhetorical symbolism, and that subtle reminiscence of a great literary and spiritual inheritance, the Bible, which stands to us as Homer did to the ancients--it excels the finest gem to be found in poetic cabinets from the Greek Anthology downward. Only because it was not written in the typography of verse, with capitalized and paragraphed initial words at the beginning of each thought-group of words, has it failed of recognition as a poem by academic minds. Had Walt Whitman composed the address, and printed it in the above manner, it would now appear in every anthology of poetry published since its date. To convince of this those conventional people who must have an ocular demonstration of form in order to compare the address with accepted examples of poetry, I will dare to incur the condemnation of those who rightly look upon such a departure from Lincoln's own manner of writing the speech as profanation, and present it in the shape of _vers libre_. For the latter class of readers this, the greatest poem by Lincoln, the greatest, indeed, yet produced in America, may be preferably read in the original form on page 100 of this collection. I trust that these, especially if they are teachers of literature, will pardon, for the sake of others less cultivated in poetic taste, what may appear a duplication here, unnecessary to themselves, of the address.

SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG

By ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Four score and seven years ago
Our fathers brought forth on this continent
A new nation,
Conceived in liberty,
And dedicated to the proposition
That all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
Testing whether that nation,
Or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
Can long endure.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field
As a final resting-place
For those who here gave their lives
That that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper
That we should do this.
But, in a larger sense,
We cannot dedicate--
We cannot consecrate--
We cannot hallow--
This ground.
The brave men, living and dead,
Who struggled here,
Have consecrated it far above our poor power
To add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember
What we say here,
But it can never forget
What they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather,
To be dedicated here to the unfinished work
Which they who fought here have so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated
To the great task remaining before us--
That from these honored dead
We take increased devotion to that cause
For which they gave the last full measure of devotion;
That we here highly resolve
That these dead shall not have died in vain;
That this nation, under God,
Shall have a new birth of freedom;
And that government of the people,
By the people, and for the people
Shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln attained this classic perfection of ordered thought, and with it, as an inevitable accompaniment this classic beauty of expression, only by great struggle. He became a poet of the first rank only by virtue of his moral spirit. He was continually correcting deficiencies in his character, which were far greater than is generally received, owing to the tendency of American historians of the tribe of Parson Weems to find by force illustrations of moral heroism in the youth of our great men. Thus Lincoln is represented as a noble lad, who, having allowed a borrowed book to be ruined by rain, went to the owner and offered to "pull fodder" to repay him, which the man ungenerously permitted him to do. The truth is, that the neighbor, to whom the book was a cherished possession, required him to do the work in repayment, and that Lincoln not only did it grudgingly, but afterwards lampooned the man so severely in satiric verse that he was ashamed to show himself at neighborhood gatherings. All the people about Gentryville feared Lincoln's caustic wit, and disliked him for it, although they were greatly impressed with his ability exhibited thereby. Lincoln recognized his moral obliquity, and curbed his propensity for satire, which was a case of that "exercise of natural faculty" which affects all gifted persons. And when he left that region he visited all the neighbors, and asked pardon of those whom he had ridiculed. The true Lincoln is a far better example to boys than the fictitious one, in that he had more unlovely traits at first than the average lad, yet he reformed, with the result that, when he went to new scenes, he speedily became the most popular young man in the neighborhood. He was one of those who

"rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."

The reformation of his character by self examination and determination not to make the same mistake again seems to have induced similar effects and methods for their attainment in the case of his intellectual development. Whatever the connection, both regenerations proceeded apace. Lincoln at first was a shallow thinker, accepting without examination the views of others, especially popular statesmen, such as Henry Clay, whose magnetic personality was drawing to himself the high-spirited young men of the West. Some of the political doctrines which Lincoln then adopted he retained to the end, these being on subjects such as taxation and finance whose moral bearing was not apparent, and therefore into which he never inquired closely, for Lincoln's mind could not be profoundly interested in any save a moral question. When he found that a revered statesman was weak upon a crucial moral issue, he repressed his innate tendency to loyalty and rejected him. Thus, after a visit to Henry Clay in Kentucky, when the slavery question was arising to vex the country despite the efforts the aged statesman had made to settle it by the compromise of 1850, Lincoln returned disillusioned, having found that the light he himself possessed on the subject was clearer than that of his old leader. The eulogy which he delivered on the death of Clay, which occurred shortly afterward (in 1852), is the most perfunctory of all his addresses.

Indeed, not till the time of the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1854, which brought Lincoln back into politics by its overthrow of what he regarded as the constitutional exclusion of slavery from the Territories, did he rise to his highest powers as a thinker and speaker. Lincoln had been defeated for reelection to Congress because of his opposition, though not highly moral in character, to the popular Mexican war, and, regarding himself as a political failure, he had devoted himself to law. His most notable speech in the House of Representatives, a well composed satirical arraignment of President Polk for throwing the country into war, had failed utterly of its intended effect, probably because of its trimming partisan tone. In 1854 he was relieved of the trammels of party, the Whigs having gone to smash. Anti-slavery had become a great moral movement, and he was drawn into its current. Almost at once he became its Western leader. His speech against the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise which had been effected by his inveterate antagonist, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, was his first classic achievement in argumentative oratory. While in the greater aspect of artistic composition, the form of the address as a whole, his master was Euclid, in minor points the influence of Shakespeare, of whom Lincoln had become a great reader, was apparent, as indicated by a quotation from the dramatist, and an application to Senator Douglas of the scene of Lady Macbeth trying to wash out the indelible stain upon her hand. Also the Bible was the source of strong and telling phrases and figures of speech. Thus he denominated slavery as "the great Behemoth of danger," and asked, "shall the strong grip of the nation be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the hands of his feeble keepers?"

And, in the following passage, characteristic of the new Lincoln, I think that either Shakespeare and the Bible had combined to inspire him with graphic description of character and moral indignation, or they enforced these native powers.

"Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native tyrants known as the 'Slave-Dealer'. He watches your necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave at a speculative price. If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's children. If you are obliged to deal with him you try to get through the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact."

Of Lincoln's critical appreciation of Shakespeare Frank B. Carpenter, the artist of the "First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation" (see illustration on page 206), writes in his "Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln" as follows:

"Presently the conversation turned upon Shakspeare, of whom it is well known Mr. Lincoln was very fond. He once remarked, 'It matters not to me whether Shakspeare be well or ill acted; with him the thought suffices.' Edwin Booth was playing an engagement at this time at Grover's Theatre. He had been announced for the coming evening in his famous part of _Hamlet_. The President had never witnessed his representation of this character, and he proposed being present. The mention of this play, which I afterward learned had at all times a peculiar charm for Mr. Lincoln's mind, waked up a train of thought I was not prepared for. Said he,--and his words have often returned to me with a sad interest since his own assassination,--'There is one passage of the play of "Hamlet" which is very apt to be slurred over by the actor, or omitted altogether, which seems to me the choicest part of the play. It is the soliloquy of the King, after the murder. It always struck me as one of the finest touches of nature in the world.'

"Then, throwing himself into the very spirit of the scene, he took up the words:--

"'O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder!--Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence;
And what's in prayer but this twofold force--
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned, being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But O what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?--
That cannot be; since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,--
My crown, my own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but 'tis not so _above_.
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In its true nature; and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can; what can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O bruised soul that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels, make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees! And heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe;
All may be well!'

"He repeated this entire passage from memory, with a feeling and appreciation unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon the stage. Remaining in thought for a few moments, he continued:--

"'The opening of the play of "King Richard the Third" seems to me often entirely misapprehended. It is quite common for an actor to come upon the stage, and, in a sophomoric style, to begin with a flourish:--

"'Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.'

"'Now,' said he, 'this is all wrong. Richard, you remember, had been, and was then plotting the destruction of his brothers, to make room for himself. Outwardly, the most loyal to the newly crowned king, secretly he could scarcely contain his impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his own elevation. He appears upon the stage, just after the crowning of Edward, burning with repressed hate and jealousy. The prologue is the utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire.' Then, unconsciously assuming the character, Mr. Lincoln repeated, also from memory, Richard's soliloquy, rendering it with a degree of force and power that made it seem like a new creation to me. Though familiar with the passage from boyhood, I can truly say that never till that moment had I fully appreciated its spirit. I could not refrain from laying down my palette and brushes, and applauding heartily upon his conclusion, saying, at the same time, half in earnest, that I was not sure but that he had made a mistake in the choice of a profession, considerably, as may be imagined, to his amusement. Mr. Sinclair has since repeatedly said to me that he never heard these choice passages of Shakspeare rendered with more effect by the most famous of modern actors."

Lincoln's sense of the classic phrase seems to have been native with him, for we find it in his earliest utterances. Such a phrase appears in homely proverbial form in his first speech: "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance." Impaired in rhythm of thought and sound by an awkward, though logical, parenthetical expression, another phrase stands out in a "spread-eagle" passage from his first formal address, that on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions."

"All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of earth (our own excepted) in its military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force _take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge_ in a trial of a thousand years."

And in a eulogy on Washington, Lincoln early achieved a line which in phonetic quality, rhetorical figure and rhythmic cadence is pure poetry, though not of an exceptional order.

"In solemn awe we pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on."

In an article entitled "Lincoln's Literary Experiments," by John G. Nicolay, one of Lincoln's two private secretaries, which was published in the Century Magazine for April, 1894, are reproduced Lincoln's notes of one lyceum lecture on "Niagara Falls," and the text of another on "Discoveries, Inventions and Improvements." These, however, detract, if anything, from Lincoln's reputation as a writer, for in choice of subjects and in style of treatment there is seen an almost discreditable stooping of a man of genius, even in his function of teacher, to the low popular taste of the West at the time. In the first lecture Lincoln presented the statistics of the water power of Niagara Falls for each minute, and led his hearers from this base to the "contemplation of the vast power the sun is constantly exerting in the quiet noiseless operation of lifting water up to be rained down again." Yet at this point he stopped short of his duty as an educator, for he made no suggestion as to the utilization of this power. He was satisfied with giving the people what they had come for--the pleasant excitation of a mental faculty, that of the imagination in its primary form of wonder at the grandeur of the material universe. In short, he was acting as a mere entertainer--as so many of our public men do now at "Chautauquas."

In the second lecture he performed this function in a still more discreditable manner, by catering to the unworthy demand of his hearers for obvious and familiar humorous conceptions to grasp which would cause them no mental exertion. Thus, in speaking of the inventions of the locomotive and telegraph, already old enough for the first inevitable similitudes and jocose remarks about them to be current, he said:

"The iron horse is panting and impatient to carry him (man) everywhere in no time; and the lightning stands ready harnessed to take and bring his tidings in a trifle less than no time."

This reveals Lincoln's taste for the characteristic American humor of exaggeration, which was later to afford him relief from the stress and strain of his duties as President in the works of "Petroleum V. Nasby" and "Artemus Ward," writers, however, with a quaint originality which lifted them and their admirers above the plane of humorous composition and appreciation of the preceding decade. Indeed, Lincoln developed his own power of witty expression to a degree excelling that of the writers he admired, and in quality of product, if not in quantity (for the greater part of the "funny stories" attributed to him, thank heaven, are apocryphal) he stands in the front rank of the American humorists of his generation.

And as the poet and the wit are near akin through this common appeal to the imagination, Lincoln, had he overcome the obsession of melancholy in his nature which was the mood in which he resorted to poetry, and which early limited his taste for it to verse of a sad and reflective kind, might have become a literary craftsman of the order of Holmes, whose poetry in the main was bright and joyous, and, even when he occasionally touched upon such subjects as death, was, as we have seen, informed with inspiring Hellenic beauty rather than depressing Hebraic moralization. It was in his sad moments, says Henry C. Whitney, that the mind of Lincoln "gravitated toward the weird, sombre and mystical. In his normal and tranquil state of mind, 'The Last Leaf,' by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was his favorite" (poem). It was Lincoln's happy lot to rise in the realm of oratory by the power of his poetic spirit higher than any American, save probably Emerson, has done in other fields of literature. On the theme of slavery, where his unerring moral sense had free sway, he became our supreme orator, transcending even Webster in grandeur of thought and beauty of its expression. His periods are not as sonorous as the Olympian New England orator's, but their accents will reach as far and resound even longer by the carrying and sustaining power of the ideas which they express. Indeed, it is on the wings supplied by Lincoln that Webster's most significant conception, that of the nature of the Constitution, is even now borne along, because of the uplifting ideality which Lincoln gave it by more broadly applying it to the nation itself as an examplar and preserver to the world of ideal government.

Webster said: "It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's Government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people."

This he made the thesis for an argument which was to be followed by a magnificent peroration ending with a sentiment, calculated for use as a toast at political banquets, and as a patriotic slogan: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

Lincoln with purer taste, the expression of which, be it said to Webster's credit, had been made possible by the acceptance of the earlier statesman's contention, assumed the thesis as placed beyond all controversy, and, making it the exhortation of his speech, gave to it the character of a sacred adjuration: "That we here highly resolve ... that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Another example of Lincoln's ability to improve the composition of another writer is the closing paragraph of his first inaugural address. The President-elect had submitted the manuscript of this most important speech, which would be universally scrutinized to find what policy he would adopt toward the seceded States, to Seward, his chosen Secretary of State, for criticism and suggestion. Mr. Seward approved the argument, but advised the addition of a closing paragraph "to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South; and despondency in the East." He submitted two paragraphs of his own as alternative models. The second was in that poetic vein which occasionally cropped out in Seward's speeches, and over which Lincoln on better acquaintance was wont good-naturedly to rally him. It is evidence of Lincoln's predilection for poetic language, at least at the close of a speech, that he adopted the latter paragraph. It ran:

"I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."

Lincoln, by deft touches which reveal a literary taste beyond that of any statesman of his time, indeed beyond that which he himself had yet exhibited, transformed this passage into his peroration. His emendations were largely in the way of excision of unnecessary phrases, resolution of sentences broken in construction into several shorter, more direct ones, and change of general and vague terms in rhetorical figure to concrete and picturesque words. He wrote:

"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

More than the persuasive argument and gentle yet determined spirit of the address, it was the chaste beauty and tender feeling of these closing words which convinced the people that Lincoln measured up to the high mental and moral stature demanded of one who was to be their leader through the most critical period that had arisen in the life of the nation.

The second inaugural address, coming so shortly before the President's death, formed unintentionally his farewell address. It has the spirit and tone of prophecy. The Bible, in thought and expression, was its inspiration. The first two of its three paragraphs ring like a chapter from Isaiah, chief of the poet seers of old. The concluding paragraph is an apostolic benediction such as Paul or John might have delivered.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

* * * * *

THE POETS' LINCOLN

* * * * *

Birthplace of Lincoln, near Hodgensville, Kentucky]

Abraham Lincoln was born on the 12th day of February, 1809, on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in what was then known as Hardin, but is now known as La Rue County, Kentucky, about three miles from Hodgensville.

The above illustration represents the cabin in which he was born, as described by his former neighbors.

Out of that old hut came the mighty man of destiny, the matchless man of the Nineteenth Century. The world has no parallel for that transition from the cabin to the White House.

Julia Ward [Howe] was born in New York City, May 27, 1819. At an early age she wrote plays and poems. In 1843 Miss Ward married Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. In 1861, while on a visit to the camp near Washington, with Governor John A. Andrew and other friends, Mrs. Howe wrote to the air of "John Brown's Body" the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" which has become so popular. She also published several books of poems. She espoused the Woman-Suffrage movement in 1869, and devoted much of her time to the cause. She died in 1910.

This poem was written by Mrs. Howe in her ninetieth year and read by her in Symphony Hall, Boston, on the centenary of the martyred President's birthday, February 12, 1909.

LINCOLN

Through the dim pageant of the years
A wondrous tracery appears:
A cabin of the western wild
Shelters in sleep a new born child.

Nor nurse nor parent dear can know
The way those infant feet must go,
And yet a nation's help and hope
Are sealed within that horoscope.

Beyond is toil for daily bread,
And thought to noble issues led.
And courage, arming for the morn
For whose behest this man was born.

A man of homely, rustic ways,
Yet he achieves the forum's praise
And soon earth's highest meed has won,
The seat and sway of Washington.

No throne of honors and delights,
Distrustful days and sleepless nights,
To struggle, suffer and aspire,
Like Israel, led by cloud and fire.

A treacherous shot, a sob of rest,
A martyr's palm upon his breast,
A welcome from the glorious seat
Where blameless souls of heroes meet.

And thrilling, through unmeasured days,
A song of gratitude and praise,
A cry that all the earth shall heed,
To God, who gave him for our need.

THE GREAT OAK

Some men are born, while others seem to grow
From out the soil, like towering trees that spread
Their strong, broad limbs in shelter overhead
When tempest storms, protecting all below.

Lincoln, Great Oak of a Nation's life,
Rose from the soil, with all its virgin power
Emplanted in him for the fateful hour,
When he might save a Nation in its strife.

--_Bennett Chapple._

"Lying down was Lincoln's favorite attitude while reading or
studying. This remained a habit with him throughout
life."--_Henry C. Whitney in his "Life Of Lincoln."_]

Noah Davis, born in Haverhill, New Hampshire, September 10, 1818. He was educated at Albion, New York, and in the Seminary at Lima, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1841. Appointed in March, 1857, a justice of the New York Supreme Court. He served in Congress from March 4, 1869, till July 20, 1870, when he resigned, having been appointed by President Grant, U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He resigned that office on Dec. 31, 1872, being elected justice of the New York State Supreme Court. In 1874, he became presiding justice. In January, 1887, he was retired from the bench and resumed practice. He died in New York in 1902.

LINCOLN

Almost a hundred years ago, in a lonely hut,
Of the dark and bloody ground of wild Kentucky,
A child was born to poverty and toil,
Save in the sweet prophecy of mother's love
None dreamed of future fame for him!

'Mid deep privation and in rugged toil,
He grew unschooled to vigorous youth,
His teaching was an ancient spelling book,
The Holy Writ, "The Pilgrim's Progress,"
Old "Æsop's Fables" and the "Life of Washington";
And out of these, stretched by the hearthstone flame
For lack of other light, he garnered lore
That filled his soul with faith in God.

The prophet's fire, the psalmist's music deep,
The pilgrims' zeal throughout his steadfast march,
The love of fellow man as taught by Christ,
And all the patriot faith and truth
Marked the Father of our Land!
And there, in all his after life, in thought
And speech and act, resonant concords were in his
great soul.

And, God's elect, he calmly rose to awful power,
Restored his mighty land to smiling peace,
Then, with the martyr blood of his own life,
Baptized the millions of the free.

Henceforth, the ages hold his name high writ
And deep on their eternal rolls.

Rev. George W. Crofts was born at Leroy, Illinois, April 9, 1842. He was educated at the Illinois State University at Springfield, graduating in the class of 1864. He was ordained to the ministry in 1865. He preached at Sandwich, Illinois; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Beatrice, Nebraska, and West Point. He died at West Point, May 16, 1909.

THE BIRTH OF LINCOLN

No choir celestial sang at Lincoln's birth,
No transient star illumined the midnight sky
In honor of some ancient prophecy,
No augury was given from heaven or earth.

He blossomed like a flower of wondrous worth,
A rare, sweet flower of heaven that ne'er should die,
Altho' the vase in which it grew should lie
Most rudely rent amid the darkling dearth.

There, in that humble cabin, separate
From everything the world regarded great,
Where wealth had never pressed its greedy feet,
Where honor, pomp or fame found no retreat;
E'en there was born beneath the eye of God
The noblest man His footstool ever trod.

MENDELSSOHN
DARWIN
LINCOLN

_February 12, 1809_

Clarence E. Carr, born in Enfield, New Hampshire, January 31, 1853. Received his early education from the common schools and academies of the State, later from Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1875.

Practiced law, was also a manufacturer and farmer. Was president of the New Hampshire Unitarian Conference, director and vice-president of the American Unitarian Association, bank trustee, president of the United Life and Accident Insurance Company of Concord, New Hampshire, and occasionally a wanderer in the Elysian Fields of the Muses.

_The Three Birthday Anniversaries_ is the subject of a highly appreciative article on the subject of Mendelssohn, Darwin and Lincoln, by President Samuel A. Eliot of the American Unitarian Association, in the _Christian Register_ of February 4, 1909. The central thought therein is thus expressed very beautifully by Mr. Carr.

Three lives this day unto the world were given
Into whose souls God breathed the air of heaven,--
The first He taught the music of the spheres,
The next, of worlds, the story of the years;
And, loving, wise, and just beyond our dream,
The third a pilot made upon the New World's stream.

Their work is done, but ere they crossed "the portal,"
One, Song; One, Truth; One, Freedom; Made Immortal!

James Phinney Baxter, born at Gorham Maine, March 23, 1831. Academic education; President of Savings Bank; Mayor of Portland, six terms, 1893-97--1904-5. Organized Associated Charities and was its first President; built and donated to the City of Portland its public library in 1888, and to Gorham in 1907; also conveyed to Gorham his family mansion for use as a Museum. President Portland Public Library, Baxter Library (Gorham), Portland Benevolent Society, Overseer of Bowdoin College, President Maine Historical Society since 1890, Northeast Historical Society since 1899. Author: _The Trelawney Papers_, 1884; _The British Invasion From the North_, 1887; _Sir Ferdinando Gorges and His Province of Maine_, 1890; _The Pioneers of New France in New England_, 1894; edited ten volumes of _Documentary History of Maine_, etc.

THE NATAL DAY OF LINCOLN

Son of the Western World! whose heritage
Was the vast prairie and the boundless sky;
Whose callow thoughts with wings untrammeled sought
Free scope for growth denied to Ease and Power,
Naught couldst thou know of place or precedent,
For Freedom's ichor with thy mother's milk
Coursing thy veins, would render thee immune
To Fashion's dictate, or prescriptive creed,
Leaving thy soul unhindered to expand
Like Samuel's in Jehovah's tutelage.
Hail to thy Natal day!

Like all great souls with vision unobscured
Thou wert by Pride unswayed, and so didst tread
The gray and sombre way by Duty marked;
Seeking the springs of Wisdom, unallured
By shallower sources which the witless tempt.
Afar o'er arid plains didst thou behold
An empty sky, and mountains desolate
Barring thy way to fairer scenes beyond;
But faith was thine, and patience measureless,
Making thee equal to thy destiny.
Hail to thy Natal day!

It summons to our vision all thy life,
Of strenuous toil; the cabin low and rude;
The meagre fare; the blazing logs whose glow
Illumed the pages of inspired bards,
Shakespeare and Bunyan; prophets, priests and seers;
The darkling forest where thy ringing axe
Chimed with the music of the waterfall;
The eager flood bearing thy rugged raft
Swift footed through an ever changing world
Unknown to thee save in remembered dreams.
Hail to thy Natal day!

We see thee in the mart where Selfishness
For Fame ephemeral strives, and sordid gain;
Thy ill-requited toil till thou hadst earned
The right to raise thy potent voice within
A nation's forum, facing all the world;
And then, achievement such as few have known,
A mighty people placing in thy hand
A sceptre swaying half a continent,
Making thee peer of kings and potentates;
Aye, greater than them all, whate'er their power.
Hail to thy Natal day!

But, lo! the martial camp; the bivouac;
The rude entrenchment;--the grim fortalice;
The tented field;--the flaming battle line,
And thy great soul amidst it all unmoved
By petty aims, leading with flawless faith
Thy people to a promised land of peace;
And, then, when thou hadst reached the goal of hope,
And the world stood amazed, the heavy crown
Of martyrdom was pressed upon thy brow
And thy immortal course was consummate.
Hail to thy Natal day!

In all great souls God sows with generous hand
The seed of martyrdom, for 'twas decreed
In Eden, that alone by sacrifice
Should sons of men the crown immortal win;
And thou, who didst the shining heights attain
Of unsurpassed achievement, didst but pay
The impartial toll of souls like thine required.
And we, who on the narrow marge of Time
Standing wondering, shed no tears, but raise to thee
The pæans to a martyred hero due,
Hail to thy Natal day.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818, aged thirty-five years. The design of this monument is by Thompson Stickle, and it was constructed by J. S. Culver of Springfield, Illinois, and dedicated October 2, 1902.

In the construction of the monument in Spencer County, Indiana, Mr. Culver used as much of the granite as possible from the National Lincoln Monument before it was reconstructed.

The face of this block is handsomely hand-carved. As the Scroll of Time unrolls, it reveals the name of "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." The ivy represents affection and the branch of oak nobility.

The public celebration of the centenary of Lincoln's birth was held in the town of North Adams, Massachusetts, February 12, 1909.

Ex-Senator Thomas F. Cassidy, in his address, said: "One hundred years ago today, in Hardin County, Kentucky, there was ushered into being the child, Abraham Lincoln.

"As God selected Mary, the humble girl of Judea, to be the mother of the Saviour of mankind and she gave birth to Him in the stable at Bethlehem, so it was ordained that in the lowly log cabin of the Kentucky wilderness, Nancy Hanks should receive into the protection of her sheltering arms the child who was destined to be the Saviour of the Republic."

Harriet Monroe, born at Chicago, Illinois, December, 23, 1860. Graduated Visitation Academy, Georgetown, District Columbia, 1879. In December, 1889, was appointed to write text for cantata for opening of Chicago Auditorium in March, 1891. Was requested by Committee on Ceremonies of Chicago Exposition to write a poem for the dedication; her _Columbia Ode_ was read and sung at the dedicatory ceremonies on the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, October 21, 1892. Author of _Valerie_, and other poems, 1892; _The Columbia Ode_, 1893; _John Wellborn, Poet, A Memoir_, 1896; _The Passing Show--Modern Plays in Verse_, 1903, etc.

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.

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!

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.