Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by ALICE CARY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: No glittering chaplet brought from other lands!
Last Line: From eyes that never loved a humble hearth.
Subject(s): Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865); Presidents, United States


FOULLY ASSASSINATED, APRIL, 1865. -- INSCRIBED TO PUNCH.

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 ploughman 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 galadays!

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 up-springs;
Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth
High o'er the silken broideries of kings.

The mechanism of external forms --
The shrifts that courtiers put their bodies through,
Were alien ways to him -- his brawny arms
Had other work than posturing to do!

Born of the people, well he knew to grasp
The wants and wishes of the weak and small;
Therefore we hold him with no shadowy clasp --
Therefore his name is household to us all.

Therefore we love him with a love apart
From any fawning love of pedigree --
His was the royal soul and mind and heart --
Not the poor outward shows of royalty.

Forgive us then, O friends, if we are slow
To meet your recognition of his worth --
We're jealous of the very tears that flow
From eyes that never loved a humble hearth.





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