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                   [Illustration: (Frontispiece)

           PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1864]




                                The
                           Poets' Lincoln

                      TRIBUTES IN VERSE TO THE
                         MARTYRED PRESIDENT


                           _Selected by_

                         OSBORN H. OLDROYD

          AUTHOR OF "THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN"
                AND EDITOR OF THE "WORDS OF LINCOLN"

                  _With many portraits of Lincoln,
                      illustrations of events
                         in his life, etc._


                     PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR AT
                   "THE HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN DIED"

                         WASHINGTON, D. C.

                                1915


                          Copyright 1915,
                        by OSBORN H. OLDROYD




ACKNOWLEDGMENT


The Editor is most grateful to the various authors who have willingly
given their consent to the use of their respective poems in the
compilation of this volume. It has been a somewhat difficult problem,
not only to select the more appropriate productions, but also to find
the names of their authors, for in his Lincoln collection there are
many hundreds of poems which have appeared from time to time in
magazines, newspapers and other productions, some of which are
accompanied by more than one name as author of the same poem. In a
number of instances it has been difficult to ascertain the name of the
actual owner of the copyright, the poems having been printed in so
many forms without the copyright mark attached.

The Editor in particular extends his grateful acknowledgment to the
Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to reprint the "Emancipation
Group" by John G. Whittier; the "Life Mask" by Richard Watson Gilder;
"The Hand of Lincoln" by Clarence Stedman; "Commemoration Ode" by
James Russell Lowell, and the "Gettysburg Address" by Bayard Taylor;
to Charles Scribner's Sons for two "Lincoln" poems by Richard Henry
Stoddard; and to the J. B. Lippincott Company for the poem "Lincoln"
by George Henry Boker.

The Editor is also grateful to Dr. Marion Mills Miller for his
contribution of the introduction and a poem specially written for the
collection, and also for assistance in the editorial work.




FOREWORD


No great man has ever been spoken of with such tender expressions of
high regard as has been Abraham Lincoln. Especially is this true of the
tributes of esteem made by the poets to his memory. It is therefore
desirable that these should be preserved for future generations, and at
this time, the fiftieth anniversary of his untimely death, it is
peculiarly proper that they should be presented to the public.

Although they are chiefly the productions of American authors, quite a
number are from the pens of appreciative citizens of other countries.
From the thousand of meritorious poems which have been written about
Lincoln, the compiler, after serious consideration, has selected those
within as appearing to be gems; although there were others which he
would have been glad to include if space permitted.

The poems and illustrations are arranged largely in the chronological
order of their application to the events in the life of Lincoln. The
intense sympathy and warm appreciation portrayed therein for our
Martyred President, as well as their artistic merit assure the poems
a sacred place in the heart of every patriotic American.

The large number of selected portraits and illustrations of events
connected with his life, service, death and burial, with brief
sketches of authors of the following poems, also forms a compilation
of rich material for all readers of Lincoln literature.

The object in publishing this compilation is to assist in preserving
the collection of memorials now contained in the house in which
Lincoln died, 516 Tenth Street, Washington, D. C.

The volume will be sent postpaid by the Editor at the above address,
upon receipt of its price, $1.00.

                                                  OSBORN H. OLDROYD.

  Washington, D. C., September twelve,
    Nineteen hundred and fifteen.




CONTENTS

                                                                 PAGE
  INTRODUCTION--The Poetic Spirit of Lincoln, by Marion Mills
        Miller .................................................... v
    MY CHILDHOOD'S HOME I SEE AGAIN, by Abraham Lincoln .......... vi
    BUT HERE'S AN OBJECT MORE OF DREAD, by Abraham Lincoln ..... viii
    OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD? By William
        Knox ..................................................... ix
    SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG (in verse form), by Abraham Lincoln ... xiii
    SOLILOQUY OF KING CLAUDIUS, by William Shakespeare ......... xvii
  LINCOLN, by Julia Ward Howe .................................... 14
  THE GREAT OAK, by Bennett Chapple .............................. 15
  LINCOLN, by Noah Davis ......................................... 17
  THE BIRTH OF LINCOLN, by George W. Crofts ...................... 19
  MENDELSSOHN, DARWIN, LINCOLN, by Clarence E. Carr .............. 20
  THE NATAL DAY OF LINCOLN, by James Phinney Baxter .............. 22
  NANCY HANKS, by Harriet Monroe ................................. 25
  LINCOLN THE LABORER, by Richard Henry Stoddard ................. 29
  A PEACEFUL LIFE, by James Whitcomb Riley ....................... 31
  LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE, by William Wilberforce Newton ............ 32
  LINCOLN, by Wilbur Hazelton Smith .............................. 35
  LINCOLN IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR, by James Riley .................... 37
  THE VOICE OF LINCOLN, by Elizabeth Porter Gould ................ 41
  THE THOUGHTS OF LINCOLN, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps ............ 43
  ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Richard Watson
        Gilder ................................................... 45
  THE HAND OF LINCOLN, by Edmund Clarence Stedman ................ 47
  HONEST ABE OF THE WEST, by Edmund Clarence Stedman ............. 51
  PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 1860, by William Henry Burleigh ......... 53
  LINCOLN, 1809--FEBRUARY 12, 1909, by Madison Cawein ............ 56
  THE MATCHLESS LINCOLN, by Isaac Bassett Choate ................. 59
  LINCOLN, by Charlotte Becker ................................... 61
  LINCOLN AT SPRINGFIELD, 1861, by Anna Bache .................... 65
  LINCOLN CALLED TO THE PRESIDENCY, by Henry Wilson
        Clendenin ................................................ 70
  LINCOLN THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE, by Edwin Markham ................ 74
  LINCOLN, by John Vance Cheney .................................. 76
  LINCOLN'S CHURCH IN WASHINGTON, by Lyman Whitney Allen ......... 80
  SONNET IN 1862, by John James Piatt ............................ 83
  LINCOLN, SOLDIER OF CHRIST, in Macmillan's Magazine ............ 85
  A CHARACTERIZATION OF LINCOLN, by Hamilton Schuyler ............ 87
  THE EMANCIPATION GROUP, by John Greenleaf Whittier ............. 91
  THE LIBERATOR, by Theron Brown ................................. 94
  TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN, by Edmund Ollier ......................... 96
  ON FREEDOM'S SUMMIT, by Charles G. Foltz ....................... 98
  ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE CEMETERY AT
        GETTYSBURG, by Abraham Lincoln .......................... 100
  GETTYSBURG ODE, by Bayard Taylor .............................. 102
  LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL, by Benjamin Franklin Taylor ....... 104
  OH, PATIENT EYES! by Herman Hagedorn .......................... 107
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Margaret Elizabeth Sangster ............... 109
  THE MAN LINCOLN, by Wilbur Dick Nesbit ........................ 113
  THE MASTER, by Edwin Arlington Robinson ....................... 116
  LINCOLN, by Harriet Monroe .................................... 119
  THE EYES OF LINCOLN, by Walt Mason ............................ 121
  HE LEADS US STILL, by Arthur Guiterman ........................ 123
  LINCOLN, by S. Weir Mitchell .................................. 125
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by George Alfred Townsend .................... 126
  LINCOLN, by Paul Lawrence Dunbar .............................. 128
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Alice Cary ................................ 130
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Rose Terry Cooke .......................... 132
  LINCOLN, by Frederick Lucian Hosmer ........................... 134
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Charles Monroe Dickinson .................. 136
  SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS! by Robert Leighton ....................... 139
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN FOULLY ASSASSINATED, by Tom Taylor ............ 140
  THE DEATHBED .................................................. 144
  LINCOLN AND STANTON, by Marion Mills Miller ................... 146
  THE HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN DIED, by Robert Mackay ................ 151
  IN TOKEN OF RESPECT, Translation of Latin Verses .............. 152
  ENGLAND'S SORROW, from _London Fun_ ........................... 153
  THE FUNERAL HYMN OF LINCOLN, by Phineas Densmore Gurley ....... 155
  REST, REST FOR HIM, by Harriet McEwen Kimball ................. 157
  THE FUNERAL CAR OF LINCOLN, by Richard Henry Stoddard ......... 159
  THE DEATH OF LINCOLN, by William Cullen Bryant ................ 161
  ODE, by Henry T. Tuckerman .................................... 163
  TOLLING, by Lucy Larcom ....................................... 164
  REQUIEM OF LINCOLN, by Richard Storrs Willis .................. 167
  REQUIEM, by James Nicoll Johnston ............................. 168
  SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Oliver Wendell
        Holmes .................................................. 170
  SPRINGFIELD'S WELCOME TO LINCOLN, by William Allen ............ 173
  LINCOLN, by Lucy Hamilton Hooper .............................. 175
  LET THE PRESIDENT SLEEP, by James M. Stewart .................. 179
  THE CENOTAPH OF LINCOLN, by James Mackay ...................... 181
  DEDICATION POEM, by James Judson Lord ......................... 183
  THE GRAVE OF LINCOLN, by Edna Dean Proctor .................... 186
  COMMEMORATION ODE, by James Russell Lowell .................... 189
  AN HORATIAN ODE, by Richard Henry Stoddard .................... 193
  O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! by Walt Whitman ........................ 197
  ON THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN, by Henry De Garrs ............ 200
  POETICAL TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
        by Emily J. Bugbee ...................................... 201
  LINCOLN, 1865, by John Nichol ................................. 204
  LINCOLN, by Christopher Pearse Cranch ......................... 206
  LINCOLN, by George Henry Boker ................................ 208
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Phoebe Cary ............................... 210
  LINCOLN, by Charles Graham Halpin ("Miles O'Reilly") .......... 215
  THE MARTYR PRESIDENT .......................................... 219
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Eugene J. Hall ............................ 220
  THE TOMB OF LINCOLN, by Samuel Francis Smith .................. 222
  LINCOLN, by John Townsend Trowbridge .......................... 227
  HOMAGE DUE TO LINCOLN, by Kinahan Cornwallis .................. 229
  THE SCOTLAND STATUE, by David K. Watson ....................... 231
  THE UNFINISHED WORK, by Joseph Fulford Folsom ................. 234
  ONE OF OUR PRESIDENTS, by Wendell Philips Stafford ............ 236
  ON A BRONZE MEDAL OF LINCOLN, by Frank Dempster Sherman ....... 239
  THE GLORY THAT SLUMBERED IN THE GRANITE ROCK,
        by Ella Wheeler Wilcox .................................. 241
  THE LINCOLN BOULDER, by Louis Bradford Couch .................. 243
  WHEN LINCOLN DIED, by James Arthur Edgerton ................... 247
  HAD LINCOLN LIVED, by Amos Russell Wells ...................... 250
  LET HIS MONUMENT RISE, by Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin ....... 253




ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                                 PAGE
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1864 ....... _Frontispiece_
  LINCOLN, from a Bust by Johannes Gelert ........................ iv
  THE LOG CABIN, Birthplace of Lincoln ........................... 13
  LINCOLN BY THE CABIN FIRE ...................................... 16
  MENDELSSOHN, DARWIN, LINCOLN ................................... 20
  MONUMENT TO THE MOTHER OF LINCOLN .............................. 25
  THE RAIL SPLITTER .............................................. 28
  THE BOY LINCOLN, by Eastman Johnson ............................ 30
  LINCOLN THE LAWYER, from an Ambrotype, 1856 .................... 34
  LINCOLN'S OFFICE CHAIR ......................................... 36
  LINCOLN AS A CANDIDATE FOR UNITED STATES SENATOR, from an
        Ambrotype by Gilmer, 1858 ................................ 40
  LINCOLN AT THE TIME OF DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS, from an Ambrotype,
        1858 ..................................................... 42
  THE LINCOLN LIFE-MASK, by Leonard W. Volk ...................... 44
  THE HAND OF LINCOLN, a Cast by Leonard W. Volk ................. 46
  HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY,
        1860, painted by Hicks ................................... 49
  THE "WIGWAM," Convention Hall in Chicago, 1860 ................. 50
  LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, from an Ambrotype, 1860 .... 52
  "HONEST ABE," Campaign Cartoon of 1860 ......................... 55
  LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, Photograph by Hesler,
        Chicago, 1860 ............................................ 58
  LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, Photograph at
        Springfield, Ill., 1860 .................................. 60
  CABIN OF LINCOLN'S PARENTS, on Goose-Nest Prairie, Ill. ........ 62
  LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, Springfield, Ill., 1861 ..................... 64
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SECRETARIES, JOHN G. NICOLAY AND
        JOHN HAY, Photograph at Springfield, Ill., 1861 .......... 67
  INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA ................................ 69
  LINCOLN IN 1858, Photograph by S. M. Fassett, Chicago .......... 71
  THE CAPITOL, at Second Inauguration of Lincoln ................. 73
  THE WHITE HOUSE ................................................ 76
  WHERE LINCOLN WORSHIPPED, New York Avenue Presbyterian Church,
        Washington, D. C. ........................................ 79
  LINCOLN IN 1858, Photograph Owned by Stuart Brown,
        Springfield, Ill. ........................................ 82
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph Autographed for Miss Speed ....... 84
  LINCOLN IN FEBRUARY, 1860, Photograph by Brady ................. 86
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Gardner ....................... 88
  EMANCIPATION GROUP, in Park Square, Boston ..................... 90
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1863 ................... 93
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Gardner, 1863 ................. 95
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady ......................... 97
  LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG ......................................... 100
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SON THOMAS ("TAD") .................. 103
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady ........................ 106
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady ........................ 108
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Gardner, 1864 ................ 112
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT ANTIETAM ................................. 115
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Gardner, 1864 ................ 118
  PRESIDENT-ELECT LINCOLN, Photograph at Springfield, Ill.,
        1861 .................................................... 120
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1862 .................. 122
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1864 .................. 124
  STATUE OF LINCOLN in Hodgenville, Ky.; Adolph A. Weinman,
        sculptor ................................................ 126
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1864 .................. 128
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Gardner, 1865 ................ 130
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Gardner, 1865 ................ 132
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1865 .................. 134
  FORD'S THEATRE, WASHINGTON, D. C. ............................. 138
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, FOULLY ASSASSINATED,
        Cartoon in London _Punch_ ............................... 140
  DEATHBED OF LINCOLN ........................................... 144
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND EDWIN M. STANTON .......................... 146
  DEATH OF LINCOLN .............................................. 149
  HOUSE IN WHICH LINCOLN DIED ................................... 150
  JOSEPHINE OLDROYD TIEFENTHALER ................................ 150
  THE FUNERAL OF LINCOLN, in East Room of White House ........... 154
  THE FUNERAL CAR ............................................... 158
  CITY HALL, NEW YORK, N. Y. .................................... 162
  ROTUNDA, CITY HALL ............................................ 166
  ST. JAMES HALL, BUFFALO, N. Y. ................................ 168
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1863 .................. 170
  LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, May 4, 1865 ................................ 172
  STATE CAPITOL, ILLINOIS, 1865 ................................. 175
  PUBLIC VAULT, OAK RIDGE CEMETERY, SPRINGFIELD, ILL. ........... 178
  FACADE OF PUBLIC VAULT ........................................ 180
  LINCOLN MONUMENT, in Springfield, Ill., Larken G. Mead,
        Architect ............................................... 182
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, Lincoln Park, Washington, D. C.,
        Thomas Ball, sculptor ................................... 188
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, by Leonard W. Volk ......................... 192
  "THE GOOD GRAY POET" (Walt Whitman) ........................... 196
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Washington, D. C.; Lott Flannery,
        sculptor ................................................ 199
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Muskegon, Mich.; Charles Niehaus,
        sculptor ................................................ 203
  LINCOLN AND CABINET ("First Reading of Emancipation
        Proclamation"), Painted by Frank B. Carpenter ........... 206
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Randolph
        Rogers, sculptor ........................................ 208
  PRESIDENT LINCOLN, Photograph by Brady, 1864 .................. 210
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Lincoln Park, Chicago; Augustus Saint
        Gaudens, sculptor ....................................... 214
  TABLET AT PHILADELPHIA ........................................ 218
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Rotunda of Capitol; Vinnie Ream,
        sculptor ................................................ 222
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Lincoln, Neb.; Daniel Chester French,
        sculptor ................................................ 226
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Burlington, Wis.; George E. Ganiere,
        sculptor ................................................ 228
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Edinburgh, Scotland; George E. Bissell,
        sculptor ................................................ 231
  STATUE OF LINCOLN, in Newark, N. J.; Gutzon Borglum,
        sculptor ................................................ 234
  CHILDREN ON THE BORGLUM STATUE ................................ 236
  HEAD OF LINCOLN, Bronze Medallion in Commemoration of Lincoln
        Centenary, Struck for the Grand Army of the Republic .... 238
  MARBLE HEAD OF LINCOLN, in Statuary Hall, Capitol; Gutzon
        Borglum, sculptor ....................................... 240
  THE LINCOLN BOULDER, at Nyack, N. Y. .......................... 243
  BAS-RELIEF HEAD OF LINCOLN, James W. Tuft, sculptor ........... 246
  A STUDY OF LINCOLN, Painting by Blendon Campbell .............. 249
  THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL, at Washington, D. C., Henry Bacon,
        architect ............................................... 252




                       [Illustration: LINCOLN

                  From a bust by Johannes Gelert]




                            INTRODUCTION

                    THE POETIC SPIRIT OF LINCOLN

                       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




                 *       *       *       *       *




                    [Illustration: THE LOG CABIN

        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._




              [Illustration: LINCOLN BY THE CABIN FIRE

    "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.




               [Illustration: Mendelssohn Darwin Lincoln]


                            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.




         [Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE MOTHER OF LINCOLN]


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!




                  [Illustration: 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.




                  [Illustration: "THE BOY LINCOLN"

                        By Eastman Johnson]




James Whitcomb Riley was born in Greenfield, Indiana, about 1852. He
was engaged in various pursuits until 1875, when he began to
contribute verses of poetry to local papers in the Western district
which gained wide popularity for him. His published works in dialect
and his serious poems have also proved very popular.


                          A PEACEFUL LIFE

                             (LINCOLN)

               A peaceful life;--just toil and rest--
                 All his desire;--
               To read the books he liked the best
                 Beside the cabin fire.
               God's word and man's;--to peer sometimes
                 Above the page, in smoldering gleams,
               And catch, like far heroic rhymes,
                 The onmarch of his dreams.

               A peaceful life;--to hear the low
                 Of pastured herds,
               Or woodman's axe that, blow on blow,
                 Fell sweet as rhythmic words.
               And yet there stirred within his breast
                 A faithful pulse, that, like a roll
               Of drums, made high above his rest
                 A tumult in his soul.

               A peaceful life!--They hailed him even
                 As One was hailed
               Whose open palms were nailed toward Heaven
                 When prayers nor aught availed.
               And lo, he paid the selfsame price
                 To lull a nation's awful strife
               And will us, through the sacrifice
                 Of self, his peaceful life.




William Wilberforce Newton, born in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, March,
1836. Was graduated at Franklin and Marshall College in 1853. Studied
law, and was admitted to the bar in 1867. He served as Captain and
Assistant Adjutant General of U. S. Volunteers in 1861-5; was Editor
of the _Philadelphia Press_ and President of the "Press" Publishing
Co., from 1867 till 1878. He is the author of _Vignettes of Travel_
and has been largely engaged in railway building in Mexico.


                        LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE

                    Saw you in his boyhood days
                      O'er Kentucky's prairies;
                    Bending to the settler's ways
                    Yon poor youth whom now we praise--
                      Romance like the fairies?
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.

                    Saw you in the days of youth
                      By the candle's flaring:
                    Lincoln searching for the truth,
                    Splitting rails to gain, forsooth,
                      Knowledge for the daring?
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.

                    Saw you in his manhood's prime
                      Like a star resplendent,
                    Him we praise with measured rhyme
                    Waiting for the coming time
                      With a faith transcendent?
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.

                    Saw you in the hour of strife
                      When fierce war was raging,
                    Him who gave the slaves a life
                    Full and rich with freedom rife,
                      All his powers engaging?
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.

                    Saw you when the war was done
                      (Such is Lincoln's story)
                    Him whose strength the strife had won
                    Sinking like the setting sun
                      Crowned with human glory?
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.

                    Saw you in our country's roll
                      Midst her saints and sages,
                    Lincoln's name upon the scroll--
                    Standing at the topmost goal
                      On the nation's pages?
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.

                    Hero! Yes! We know thy fame;
                      It will live forever!
                    Thou to us art still the same;
                    Great the glory of thy name,
                      Great thy strong endeavor!
                    Hero! Hero! Sent from God!
                      Leader of his people.




                 [Illustration: LINCOLN THE LAWYER

                 From an Ambrotype, taken in 1856]


"The charm which invested the life on the Eighth Circuit in the mind
and fancy of Mr. Lincoln yet lingered there, even in the most
responsible and glorious days of his administration; over and over
again has the great President stolen an hour ... from his life of
anxious care to live over again those bygone exhilarating and halcyon
days ... with Sweet or me."--Henry C. Whitney in his _Life of Lincoln_.




Wilbur Hazelton Smith was born in the town of Mansfield, New York,
March 28, 1860. His early education was obtained from the district
school and he began teaching at the age of sixteen. After completing
an academic course he went to Cornell University from which he was
graduated with the degree of A.B. in 1885.

He at once became a teacher and after a few years started the first
Current Topic paper in the state, _The Educator_. Later he edited a
teachers' paper, _The World's Review_. Perhaps he is best known as
publisher of the _Regents' Review Books_ used in nearly every school
in the United States. His death occurred October 19, 1913.


                              LINCOLN

           Unlearned in the cant and quip of schools,
             Uncouth, if only city ways refine;
             Ungodly, if 'tis creeds that make divine;
           In station poor, as judged by human rules,
             And yet a giant towering o'er them all;
             Clean, strong in mind, just, merciful, sublime;
             The noblest product of the age and time,
             Invoked of God in answer to men's call.

           O simple world, and will you ever learn,
             Schools can but guide, they cannot mind create?
             'Neath roughest rock the choicest treasures wait;
           In meanest forms we priceless gems discern;
             Nor time, nor age, condition, rank nor birth,
             Can hide the truly noble of the earth.




               [Illustration: LINCOLN'S OFFICE CHAIR]


This chair was used by Mr. Lincoln in his law office at Springfield,
Illinois, where, before leaving for the City of Washington after his
election as President, he wrote his Inaugural Address and formed his
Cabinet, frequently conferring with his twenty-year law partner,
William H. Herndon, on such matters, and adopting changes as suggested
if he considered them advisable. It was presented to O. H. Oldroyd
while living in the Lincoln Homestead, Springfield, by Mr. Herndon,
March 18, 1886.


James Riley was born in the hamlet of Tang, one mile from the town of
Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, and two miles from Lissoy,
County Westmeath, the home of Oliver Goldsmith--on the road between
the two--August 15, 1848. Published _Poems_, 1888; _Songs of Two
Peoples_, 1898, and _Christy of Rathglin_, a novel, in 1907. His poem
_The American Flag_, has been rated often as the best poem written to
our banner. Four lines on the loss of the Titanic brought from Captain
Rostron words in which he said: "With such praise one feels on a
higher plane, and must keep so, to be worthy of continuance."


                    LINCOLN IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR

                 High-browed, rugged, and swarthy;
                   A picture of pain and care;
                 A lawyer sat with his greatest brief,
                   High in his office chair.

                 His Country was to him client!
                   Futurity his ward!
                 And he must plead 'fore Fate's high court,
                   With prayer, and pen, and sword.

                 Elected, by his people!
                   His heart and theirs, one beat!
                 He sees the storm-clouds gather;
                   The waves dash at his feet!

                 Gloom upon land and water!
                   The Flag no more in the sun!
                 Lights from the South-line flickering,
                   And--dying--one--by one!

                 November's winds wild shrieking!
                   Night--closed, on a Union rent!
                 And still the lawyer sat dreaming
                   Of its once bright firmament.

                 Then, '61! Dark! Silent!
                   Only the calling word
                 Of Anderson at Sumter
                   The lawyer, writing, heard.

                 Writing the Message that ever
                   Shall live in the hearts of men;
                 With cannon to cannon fronting,
                   The lawyer held the pen.

                 Only thinking of Country
                   And the work that must be done;
                 Nature made in roughest mold
                   Her favored, fated son.

                 He wrote while the world was waiting
                   Great Freedom's final test.
                 Should, or should not Democracy
                   Be planted in the West?

                 Should Liberty at last survive
                   And man look straight on man?
                 Law, in its round, its strength and might
                   Be timed unto sense and plan?

                 He, in his chair there sitting,
                   Had all these things for thought.
                 Now, the Vote unrecognized,
                   Must battles wild be fought?

                 Alone the Chair is standing,
                   To remind the Land of the time
                 When the Slaver's heart, all passion,
                   He planned, and pursued his crime!

                 As he rushed Disunion's order,
                   On, on from State to State!
                 And the Pen talked loud down the Message,
                   And bided the Land to wait.




   [Illustration: LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR UNITED STATES SENATOR

      Photograph from an Ambrotype, by Gilmer, Illinois, 1858]




Elizabeth Porter Gould, born June 8, 1848, died July 28, 1906.
Essayist, lecturer and author; an early inspirer of woman's clubs and
the pioneer of the _Current Events_ and _Topics_ classes in Boston and
vicinity; an officer in several educational societies and honorary
member of the Webster Historical Society, Castilian Club and other
clubs where she had read many historical papers of great research and
given many practical suggestions. Among her published works are _Gems
From Walt Whitman_, _Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman_, _Ezekial
Cheever, Schoolmaster_, _John Adams and Daniel Webster as
Schoolmasters_, _A Pioneer Doctor_, _One's Self I Sing_ and _The
Brownings and America_. She had great energy and force of character,
and a capacity for friendship which was a source of great happiness to
her and endeared her to all.


                        THE VOICE OF LINCOLN

          In life's great symphony,
          Above the seeming discord and the pain,
          A master-voice is ever singing, singing,
          The plan of God to men.

          In young America's song,
          As threatening tumult pierced the tensioned air,
          The voice of Lincoln over all was singing
          The love of brother-man.

          And still his voice is heard;
          'Twill pierce the din of strife and mystery,
          Till master-voices cease their singing, singing,
          In life's great symphony.




     [Illustration: LINCOLN AT THE TIME OF DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS

         From an Ambrotype taken at Beardstown, Ill., 1858]


His friends advised Lincoln to press his opponent on the Dred Scott
decision (of the United States Supreme Court permitting slavery in the
Territories), as Douglas would accept it, but argue for nullifying it
by anti-slavery legislation in the territorial assemblies, and this
would satisfy the people of Illinois, and elect him Senator. "All
right," said Lincoln, "then that kills him in 1860. I am gunning for
larger game."




Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was born in Andover, Massachusetts, on August
13, 1844. Educated at Andover. Her literary career began at the age of
thirteen with contributions to the newspapers. The earlier years of
her life were devoted to Christian labors among the poor families in
Andover, but failing health finally prevented her from carrying on her
labors along that line, and kept her within her study, but her
sympathy was always enlisted in the reformatory questions of the day.
_The Gates Ajar_ proved very popular, as did also her many juvenile
books. She wrote this poem for the Lincoln Memorial Album in 1882. She
died January 29, 1911.


                      THE THOUGHTS OF LINCOLN

            The angels of your thoughts are climbing still
              The shining ladder of his fame,
            And have not reached the top, nor ever will,
              While this low life pronounces his high name.

            But yonder, where they dream, or dare, or do,
              The "good" or "great" beyond our reach,
            To talk of him must make old language new
              In heavenly, as it did in human, speech.




                [Illustration: THE LINCOLN LIFE-MASK

                        By Leonard W. Volk]


Mr. Lincoln was engaged in trying a case in the United States Court at
Chicago, Illinois, in April, 1860, and Leonard W. Volk, the sculptor,
called upon him and said: "I would like to have you sit to me for your
bust." "I will, Mr. Volk," replied Lincoln. This was the first time
that Lincoln sat to an artist for the reproduction of his physique in
this manner. Previous to this he had posed only for daguerreotypes or
for photographs.


Richard Watson Gilder was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, February 8,
1844, and was educated at his father's school. He enlisted in Landis'
Philadelphia Battery for the emergency call in the campaign of 1863,
when the Confederate forces invaded Pennsylvania. Later he was editor
of a number of magazines and upon the death of J. G. Holland he was
made associate editor of the _Century_. At the age of twenty-six he
had attained high literary standing. His poems are published in five
volumes. He rendered valuable service in tenement-house reform over
the country. He died on the 18th day of November, 1909.


                ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

         This bronze doth keep the very form and mold
           Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
           That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
         That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
         Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
           That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
           For storms to beat on; the lone agony
           Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
         Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
           As might some prophet of the elder day--
           Brooding above the tempest and the fray
         With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
           A power was his beyond the touch of art
           Or armed strength--his pure and mighty heart.




                [Illustration: THE HAND OF LINCOLN]


The Saturday after the nomination of Mr. Lincoln for President of the
United States, the Committee appointed to inform him of the said
nomination arrived in Springfield and performed this duty in the
evening at his home.

The cast of his hand was made the next morning by Mr. Leonard W. Volk.
While the sculptor was making the cast of his left hand, Lincoln
called his attention to a scar on his thumb. "You have heard me called
the 'rail-splitter' haven't you?" he said, "Well, I used to split
rails when I was a young man, and one day, while sharpening a wedge on
a log, the axe glanced and nearly took off my thumb."


Edmund Clarence Stedman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on the 8th
of October, 1833. He entered Yale College at the age of sixteen and
distinguished himself in Greek and English Composition. He was the
editor of several papers in Connecticut and in 1856 removed to New
York City--a larger field for his literary abilities. He was a
contributor to _Vanity Fair_, _Putnam's Monthly_, _Harper's Magazine_
and other periodicals. His poems: _The Diamond Wedding_, _How Old John
Brown Took Harper's Ferry_, _The Ballad of Lager-Bier_, gave him some
reputation. He was war-correspondent for the _World_ during the early
campaigns of the Army of the Potomac from the Headquarters of General
Irwin McDowell and General B. McClellan. He died in 1908.


                        THE HAND OF LINCOLN

                Look on this cast, and know the hand
                  That bore a nation in its hold;
                From this mute witness understand
                  What Lincoln was--how large of mold.

                The man who sped the woodman's team,
                  And deepest sunk the plowman's share,
                And pushed the laden raft astream,
                  Of fate before him unaware.

                This was the hand that knew to swing
                  The axe--since thus would Freedom train
                Her son--and made the forest ring,
                  And drove the wedge and toiled amain.

                Firm hand that loftier office took,
                  A conscious leader's will obeyed,
                And, when men sought his word and look,
                  With steadfast might the gathering swayed.

                No courtier's, toying with a sword,
                  Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute;
                Chiefs, uplifted to the Lord
                  When all the kings of earth are mute!

                The hand of Anak, sinewed strong,
                  The fingers that on greatness clutch,
                Yet lo! the marks their lines along
                  Of one who strove and suffered much.

                For here in mottled cord and vein
                  I trace the varying chart of years,
                I know the troubled heart, the strain,
                  The weight of Atlas--and the tears.

                Again I see the patient brow
                  That palm erewhile was wont to press;
                And now 'tis furrowed deep, and now
                  Made smooth with hope and tenderness.

                For something of a formless grace
                  This molded outline plays about;
                A pitying flame, beyond our trace,
                  Breathes like a spirit, in and out--

                The love that casts an aureole
                  Round one who, longer to endure,
                Called mirth to cease his ceaseless dole,
                  Yet kept his nobler purpose sure.

                Lo, as I gaze, the statured man,
                  Built up from yon large hand, appears;
                A type that nature wills to plan
                  But once in all a people's years.

                What better than this voiceless cast
                  To tell of such a one as he,
                Since through its living semblance passed
                  The thought that bade a race be free?




    [Illustration: HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR
                         THE PRESIDENCY, 1860

      Painted by Hicks; lithograph by L. Grozelier; published by
     W. Schaus, New York, 1860; printed by J. H. Bufford, Boston]




                    [Illustration: THE "WIGWAM"

  Convention Hall, at Chicago, 1860, in which Lincoln was nominated]


The Republicans of Chicago had erected a huge temporary building for
the use of the Convention. The "Wigwam," as it was called, covered a
space of 600 feet by 180, and the height was between 50 and 60 feet.
The building would hold about 10,000 persons, and was divided into
platform, ground-floor and gallery. The stage upon which the delegates
and members of the press were seated, held about 1,800 persons; the
ground-floor and galleries, about 8,000. A large gallery was reserved
for ladies, which was filled every day to overflowing. The Convention
met on June 16, 1860.




Edmund Clarence Stedman is the author of this poem, and it was
published in the _Press and Tribune_ of Chicago, and in _Weekly
Illinois State Journal_, June 13, 1860. It was sung to the air of the
"Star Spangled Banner" throughout the campaign.


                       HONEST ABE OF THE WEST

          O Hark! from the pine-crested hills of old Maine,
            Where the splendor first falls from the wings of the
                morning,
          And away in the West, over river and plain,
            Rings out the grand anthem of Liberty's warning!
          From green-rolling prairie it swells to the sea,
          For the people have risen, victorious and free,
          They have chosen their leaders, and bravest and best
          Of them all is Old Abe, Honest Abe of the West!

          The spirit that fought for the patriots of old
            Has swept through the land and aroused us forever;
          In the pure air of heaven a standard unfold
            Fit to marshal us on to the sacred endeavor!
          Proudly the banner of freemen we bear;
          Noble the hopes that encircle it there!
          And where battle is thickest we follow the crest
          Of gallant Old Abe, Honest Abe of the West!

          There's a triumph in urging a glorious cause,
            Though the hosts of the foe for a while may be stronger,
          Pushing on for just rules and holier laws,
            Till their lessening columns oppose us no longer.
          But ours the loud pæan of men who have passed
          Through the struggles of years, and are victors at last;
          So forward the flag! Leave to Heaven the rest,
          And trust in Old Abe, Honest Abe of the West!




         [Illustration: LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

  From an Ambrotype taken at Springfield, Illinois, August 13, 1860]




William Henry Burleigh, born at Woodstock, Connecticut, February 2,
1812. In early manhood became an advocate of reforms then unpopular,
and an acceptable lecturer on behalf of temperance and the
anti-slavery cause. He removed to Pittsburgh in 1837, where he
published the _Christian Witness_, and afterwards the _Temperance
Banner_. As a writer, speaker, editor, poet, reformer, friend and
associate, it was the universal testimony of those who knew him best
and esteemed him most truly, that he stood in the forefront of his
generation. His poetry, animated by deep love of nature and a profound
desire to uphold truth and justice, gives him a place with our first
minor poets.


                    PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 1860

         Up again for the conflict! Our banner fling out,
         And rally around it with song and with shout!
         Stout of heart, firm of hand, should the gallant boys be,
         Who bear to the battle the Flag of the Free!
         Like our fathers, when Liberty called to the strife,
         They should pledge to her cause fortune, honor, and life!
         And follow wherever she beckons them on,
         Till Freedom results in a victory won!

         They came from the hillside, they came from the glen--
         From the streets thronged with traffic and surging with men,
         From loom and from ledger, from workshop and farm,
         The fearless of heart, and the mighty of arm.
         As the mountain-born torrents exultingly leap
         When their ice-fetters melt, to the breast of the deep;
         As the winds of the prairie, the waves of the sea,
         They are coming--are coming--the Sons of the Free!

         Our Leader is one who, with conquerless will,
         Has climbed from the base to the brow of the hill;
         Undaunted in peril, unwavering in strife,
         He has fought a good fight in the Battle of Life,
         And we trust as one who--come woe or come weal,
         Is as firm as the rock and as true as the steel.
         Right loyal and brave, with no stain on his breast,
         Then, hurrah, boys, for honest "Old Abe of the West!"




                    [Illustration: "HONEST ABE"

                    A Campaign Cartoon of 1860]




Madison Cawein was born at Louisville, Kentucky, on the 23rd of March,
1865. Was educated in the city and country schools about Louisville
and New Albany, Indiana. Graduated from the Male High School,
Louisville, in 1886, and the following year published his first
volume, called _Blooms of the Berry_. Since then he published some
thirty-odd volumes of prose and poetry, both in the United States and
England. He died in 1915.


                  LINCOLN, 1809--FEBRUARY 12, 1909

   _Read for the first time at the Lincoln centenary celebration,
               Temple Adath Israel, Louisville, Ky._

             Yea, this is he, whose name is synonym
             Of all that's noble, though but lowly born;
             Who took command upon a stormy morn
             When few had hope. Although uncouth of limb,
             Homely of face and gaunt, but never grim,
             Beautiful he was with that which none may scorn--
             With love of God and man and things forlorn,
             And freedom mighty as the soul in him.
             Large at the helm of state he leans and looms
             With the grave, kindly look of those who die
             Doing their duty. Stanch, unswervingly
             Onward he steers beneath portentous glooms,
             And overwhelming thunders of the sky,
             Till, safe in port, he sees a people free.

             Safe from the storm; the harbor-lights of Peace
             Before his eyes; the burden of dark fears
             Cast from him like a cloak; and in his ears
             The heart-beat music of a great release;
             Captain and pilot, back upon the seas,
             Whose wrath he'd weathered, back he looks with tears,
             Seeing no shadow of the Death that nears,
             Stealthy and sure, with sudden agonies.
             So let him stand, brother to every man,
             Ready for toil or battle; he who held
             A Nation's destinies within his hand;
             Type of our greatness; first American,
             By whom the hearts of all men are compelled,
             And with whose name Freedom unites our land.

             He needs no praise of us, who wrought so well,
             Who has the Master's praise; who at his post
             Stood to the last. Yet, now, from coast to coast,
             Let memory of him peal like some great bell,
             Of him as woodsman, workman, let it tell!
             Of him as lawyer, statesman, without boast!
             And for what qualities we love him most,
             And recollections that no time can quell.
             He needs no praise of us, yet let us praise,
             Albeit his simple soul we may offend,
             That liked not praise, being most diffident;
             Still let us praise him, praise him in such ways
             As his were, and in words that shall transcend
             Marble, and outlast any monument.




         [Illustration: LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

           Photograph by Hesler, Chicago, Illinois, 1860]




Isaac Bassett Choate, born at South Otis Field, Maine, July 12, 1833.
Bachelor of Arts, Bowdoin College, 1862. Author of _Wild Birds and
Flowers_, 1895; _Wells of English_, 1892; _Obeyed the Camel Driver_,
1899; _Apollo's Guest_, 1907.

By special invitation from the faculty of the Alumni Association of
said College he read the following poem at their annual banquet held
on the centenary of Lincoln's birth, 1909:


                       THE MATCHLESS LINCOLN

             From out the ranks of common men he rose--
               Himself of common elements, yet fine--
             As in a wood of different species grows
               Above all other trees the lordly pine,
             Upon whose branches rest the winter snows,
               Upon whose head warm beams of summer shine;
             His was the heart to feel the people's woes
               And his the hand to hold the builder's line;
                 Strong, patient, wise and great,
                 Born ruler of the State.

             Among a mountain group one sovereign peak
               Will tower aloft unto commanding height
             As if more distant view abroad to seek--
               First one to hail, last one to speed the light;
             Those granite sides will snows of winter streak
               E'en in the summer with their purest white;--
             Silent, serene, that summit yet will speak
               Of loftiest grandeur to the enraptured sight;
                 So Lincoln's greatness shone
                 Supreme, unmatched, alone.




         [Illustration: LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

                Photograph, Springfield, Ill., 1860]




Charlotte Becker was born and has always lived in Buffalo, New York.
She was educated in private schools and in Europe, and has written
poems for _Harper's Magazine_, _The Metropolitan_, _The American_,
_Life_, etc., besides a number of songs which have been set to music
by Amy Woodfords-Finden, C. B. Hawley, Whitney Coombs and others.


                              LINCOLN

         Gaunt, rough-hewn face, that bore the furrowed signs
           Of days of conflict, nights of agony,
         And still could soften to the gentler lines
           Of one whose tenderness and truth went free
         Beyond the pale of any small confines
           To understand and help humanity.

         Wise, steadfast mind, that grasped a people's need,
           Counting nor pain nor sacrifice too great
         To keep the noble purpose of his creed
           Strong against all buffeting of Fate,
         Though no least solace sprang of work or deed
           For him, since triumph came at last--too late.

         Brave, weary heart, that beat uncomforted
           Beneath its heavy load of grief and care;
         That tears of blood for every battle shed,
           Yet called on mirth to help his comrades bear
         The waiting hours of anguish, and that sped
           With loyal haste each breath of balm to share.

         Only his people's griefs were his; no part
           Had he within their joy; nor his the toll
         To know the love that made rebellion start,
           Spurred hosts unnumbered to a higher goal;
         That his great soul should cleanse a nation's heart,
           His martyred heart awake a nation's soul.




             [Illustration: CABIN OF LINCOLN'S PARENTS

                  on Goose-Nest Prairie, Illinois]


The last home of the parents of Lincoln. Built by his father, Thomas,
in 1831, near Farmington, Coles Co., Ill. The father died here in 1851
and the step-mother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, in 1869. After Lincoln was
elected President in 1860, and before leaving for Washington to be
inaugurated, he visited his mother in this cabin for the last time. As
he was leaving her, she made a prediction of his tragic death. With
arms about his neck, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she
declared it was the last time she would ever see him alive, and it
proved to be so.

Lincoln once said, "I was told that I never would make a lawyer if I
did not understand what 'demonstrate' means. I left my situation in
Springfield, went to my father's house, and stayed there till I could
give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I there
found out what demonstrate means."




      [Illustration: LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS]


On Monday, February 11, 1861, Mr. Lincoln and family in company with a
party left Springfield, Illinois, for Washington, D. C. A light rain
mixed with snow was falling at the time which made the occasion a
somewhat gloomy one. Mr. Lincoln appeared on the rear platform of the
car where he bade farewell to his neighbors in the following address:

"My friends, no one not in my position can appreciate the sadness I
feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have
lived more than a quarter of a century. Here my children were born,
and here one of them lies buried.

"I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me
which is greater, perhaps, than that which has devolved upon any other
man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except
for the aid of divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied.

"I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid which
sustained him; and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for
support, and I hope you, my friends, will pray that I may receive the
divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which
success is certain. Again, I bid you an affectionate farewell."

Mr. Lincoln thought that there is a time to joke and pray; and if, as
his detractors affirm, he joked all the way to Washington, if he did
not pray also (as we believe he did, and fervently, too) he at least
desired the prayers of others, as the circumstances recorded in the
following poem will show. It is from the pen of a lady of
Philadelphia, Mrs. Anna Bache.


                    LINCOLN AT SPRINGFIELD, 1861

               "My friends,--elected by your choice,
               From the long-cherished home I go,
               Endeared by Heaven-permitted joys,
               Sacred by Heaven-permitted woe,
               I go, to take the helm of State,
               While loud the waves of faction roar,
               And by His aid, supremely great,
               Upon whose will all tempests wait,
                 I hope to steer the bark to shore.
               Not since the days when Washington
               To battle led our patriots on,
               Have clouds so dark above us met,
               Have dangers dire so close beset.
               And _he_ had never saved the land
               By deeds in human wisdom planned,
               But that with Christian faith he sought
               Guidance and blessing, where he ought.
               Like him, I seek for aid divine,
               His faith, his hope, his trust, are mine.
               Pray for me, friends, that God may make
                 My judgment clear, my duty plain;
               For if the Lord no wardship take,
                 The watchmen mount the towers in vain."

               He ceased; and many a manly breast
                 Panted with strong emotion's swell,
               And many a lip the sob suppressed,
                 And tears from manly eyelids fell.
               And hats came off, and heads were bowed,
                 As Lincoln slowly moved away;
               And then, heart-spoken, from the crowd,
               In accents earnest, clear, and loud,
                 Came one brief sentence, "We _will_ pray!"




       [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SECRETARIES,
                    JOHN G. NICOLAY AND JOHN HAY

          Photographed at Springfield, Illinois, in 1861]




On the 22nd of February, 1861, Washington's birthday, on his journey
to Washington, to assume the Presidency, Mr. Lincoln raised a new flag
over Independence Hall, then went inside and spoke as follows:--

"I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing in this
place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the
devotion to principle from which sprang the institutions under which
we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task
of restoring peace to our distracted country. I can say in return,
sirs, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn,
so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which
originated in and were given to the world from this hall. I have never
had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments
embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered
over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and
framed and adopted that Declaration. I have pondered over the toils
that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who
achieved that independence. I have often inquired of myself what great
principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together.
It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the
motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence
which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope
to all the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise
that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all
men and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment
embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

"Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? If it can,
I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can
help to save it. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up
that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on
this spot than surrender it."

Four years and two months later, April 22, 1865, his body lay,
assassinated, on the very spot where he had made the above remarks,
then being taken to Springfield, Illinois, for burial.


          [Illustration: INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA]




Henry Wilson Clendenin, born at Schellsburg, Pennsylvania, August 1,
1837; educated in private schools and by tutors. Married Mary E. Morey
of Monmouth, Illinois, October 23, 1877; to them were born five
children, four of whom survive: George M., manager _Illinois State
Register_; Clarence R., Deputy Internal Revenue Collector,
Springfield, Illinois; Harry F., proofreader, _Illinois State
Register_, and Marie, Assistant Instructor Physical Education, State
Normal University, Normal, Illinois. He was a private of Company I,
Twentieth Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, in the Civil War. Began
newspaper work on _Burlington_ (Iowa) _Hawkeye_. Afterwards telegraph
editor _Peoria Transcript_, 1858; telegraph editor _Burlington
Gazette_, 1863, and editor and proprietor, _Keokuk Daily
Constitution_, 1876-1881; since that year was editor and president of
the _Illinois State Register_. Postmaster, Springfield 1886-90. Member
Illinois State Historical Society, The Jefferson Association, Grand
Army of the Republic and Sons of the American Revolution. Director of
Lincoln Library at Springfield, Illinois, for ten years. Member of the
First Congregational Church of that city.

This sonnet was written by Mr. Clendenin, in Philadelphia, February
22, 1861, after witnessing Lincoln hoist the flag over Independence
Hall.


                  LINCOLN CALLED TO THE PRESIDENCY

           Hark to the sound that speedeth o'er the land!
           Behold the sword in fratricidal hand!
           'Tis duty calls thee, Lincoln, and thy trust
           Demands that all thy acts be wise and just.
           No idle task to thee has been assigned,
           But work that's worthy of a giant mind--
           And on the issue hangs the nation's fame
           As a free people who deserve the name.
           So, walk thou in the way the fathers trod;
           Be true to freedom, country, and to God;
           Then truth will triumph, treason be undone,
           And thou be hailed the second Washington.
           The first, the Father of his country--thou,
           Its Saviour. Bind the laurel on thy brow.




                   [Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1858

           From a photograph by S. M. Fassett of Chicago]




An act of Congress July 9, 1790, established the District of Columbia
as the National Capital, and provided that prior to the first Monday
of December, 1800, the Commissioners should have finished a suitable
building for the sessions of Congress. The site of the Capitol was
included in L'Enfant's plan for the city. The cornerstone was laid
September 18, 1793, with Masonic rites, George Washington officiating.
The wings of the central building were completed in 1811, and were
partially burned by the British, in 1814. The entire central building
was finished in 1827. The cornerstone of the extension was laid by
President Fillmore, July 4, 1851. The extensions were first occupied
by Congress 1857 and 1859. Up to that time the Senate Chamber was the
present Supreme Court Room, and the Hall of Representatives was the
present National Statuary Hall. The dome was finished during the
administration of President Lincoln. The total cost of the Capitol
building and grounds was about thirty million dollars. The remains of
President Lincoln were escorted from the White House to the Capitol at
three o'clock P.M., on the 19th of April, 1865. The number in the
procession was estimated at forty thousand, and that many more were
spectators along the route. The burial service was conducted by Dr.
Gurley. The special train bearing the remains left at 8 A.M., Friday,
April 21, for Springfield, Illinois, stopping at Baltimore, Maryland;
Harrisburg and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Albany and Buffalo, New
York; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Chicago,
Illinois, reaching Springfield, Illinois, the 3d of May, and was
buried the following day. The body lay in state in all of the above
cities.


                     [Illustration: THE CAPITOL

     The Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the
   United States, in front of the Capitol, Washington, March 4, 1865]




Edwin Markham, born at Oregon City, Oregon, April 23, 1852; settled in
California in 1857, and worked there during his boyhood, principally
as a blacksmith. Worked his way through the San Jose Normal School and
Santa Rosa College. Became a writer of stories and verse for papers
and magazines, and principal and superintendent of California schools.
Was the author of _The Man With the Hoe, and Other Poems_ (1899); _The
Man With the Hoe, with Notes by the Author_ (1900); _The End of the
Century_ (1899); _Lincoln, the Great Commoner_ (1900); _The Mighty
Hundred Years; Lincoln and Other Poems_ (1901); _The Shoes of
Happiness_ (1915). His _Man With the Hoe_ was extensively republished
and gave him wide fame.


                   LINCOLN THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE

            When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour,
            Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
            She bent the strenuous Heavens and came down
            To make a man to meet the mortal need.
            She took the tried clay of the common road--
            Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,
            Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
            Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
            It was a stuff to wear for centuries,
            A man that matched the mountains, and compelled
            The stars to look our way and honor us.

            The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;
            The tang and odor of the primal things--
            The rectitude and patience of the rocks;
            The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
            The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
            The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;
            The pity of snow that hides all scars;
            The loving-kindness of the wayside well;
            The tolerance and equity of light
            That gives as freely to the shrinking weed
            As to the great oak flaring to the wind--
            To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn
            That shoulders out the sky.

            And so he came.
            From prairie cabin up to Capitol,
            One fair ideal led our chieftain on.
            Forevermore he burned to do his deed
            With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.
            He built the rail pile as he built the State,
            Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,
            The conscience of him testing every stroke,
            To make his deed the measure of a man.

            So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
            And when the step of earthquake shook the house,
            Wresting the rafters from their ancient hold,
            He held the ridge-pole up and spiked again
            The rafters of the Home. He held his place--
            Held the long purpose like a growing tree--
            Held on through blame and faltered not at praise,
            And when he fell, in whirlwind, he went down
            As when a kingly cedar, green with boughs,
            Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
            And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.




                  [Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE]


The corner-stone was laid by George Washington on the 13th of October,
1792. The mansion was first occupied by President John Adams in the
year 1800, also by every succeeding President. British troops burned
it in 1814, in President Madison's term. It was the first public
building erected in Washington. It is constructed of Virginia
freestone, and is 170 feet in length, 80 feet in depth, and consists
of a rustic basement, two stories and an attic.




John Vance Cheney, born Groveland, New York, December 29, 1848.
Graduated Temple Hill Academy, Genesee, New York, at seventeen.
Assistant principal there two years later. Practiced law, New York,
1875-6; librarian Free Public Library, San Francisco, 1887-94;
Newberry Library, Chicago, 1894-1909; author, _The Old Doctor_, 1881;
and a number of poems, 1887-1911.


                              LINCOLN

               The hour was on us; where the man?
               The fateful sands unfaltering ran,
                 And up the way of tears
                 He came into the years.

               Our pastoral captain. Forth he came,
               As one that answers to his name;
                 Nor dreamed how high his charge,
                 His work how fair and large,

               To set the stones back in the wall
               Lest the divided house should fall,
                 And peace from men depart,
                 Hope and the childlike heart.

               We looked on him; "'Tis he," we said,
               "Come crownless and unheralded,
                 The shepherd who will keep
                 The flocks, will fold the sheep."

               Unknightly, yes: yet 'twas the mien
               Presaging the immortal scene,
                 Some battles of His wars
                 Who sealeth up the stars.

               Not he would take the past between
               His hands, wipe valor's tablets clean,
                 Commanding greatness wait
                 Till he stands at the gate;

               Not he would cramp to one small head
               The awful laurels of the dead,
                 Time's mighty vintage cup,
                 And drink all honor up.

               No flutter of the banners bold
               Borne by the lusty sons of old,
                 The haughty conquerors
                 Set forward to their wars;

               Not his their blare, their pageantries,
               Their goal, their glory, was not his;
                 Humbly he came to keep
                 The flocks, to fold the sheep.

               The need comes not without the man;
               The prescient hours unceasing ran,
                 And up the way of tears
                 He came into the years.

               Our pastoral captain, skilled to crook
               The spear into the pruning hook,
                 The simple, kindly man,
                 Lincoln, American.




              [Illustration: WHERE LINCOLN WORSHIPPED

      New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C.]


President Lincoln and family attended this church during his
Administration. The pew that they occupied is still preserved in its
black walnut trimmings, though the rest of the sanctuary has been
refurnished.




Lyman Whitney Allen, born at St. Louis, November 19, 1854. Bachelor of
Arts, Washington University, St. Louis, 1878; later Master of Arts,
Princeton Theological, 1878-80; Post-graduate studies at Princeton
University; (D.D., University of Wooster, 1897). Ordained Presbyterian
Minister, 1882; stated supply Kimmswick, Missouri, 1881-3; DeSoto,
Missouri, 1883-5; Pastor-elect Carondelet Church, St. Louis, Missouri,
1885-9; Pastor South Park Church, Newark, New Jersey, since 1889.
Director Board of Home Missions, Presbyterian; Chaplain New Jersey
Society D. A. R.; Member Society American Authors; New Jersey Society
S. A. R. Club, Princeton (New York). Has written many poems and
articles, including the New York _Herald's_ $1,000 prize poem which
was published in 1895.

Rev. Dr. Lyman Whitney Allen of Newark, New Jersey, had for his guest
Chief Justice Wendell Phillips Stafford of the Supreme Court of the
District of Columbia. Judge Stafford addressed the Men's Club of Dr.
Allen's church one evening, and next day, in company with his host,
visited the Lincoln statue on the court-house plaza. On the train that
bore him back to Washington that day, Judge Stafford wrote the poem on
the Statue. (See page 236).

A few weeks thereafter Dr. Allen visited his friend, the judge, in
Washington, and they made a little pilgrimage to the New York Avenue
Presbyterian church. In the Lincoln pew Dr. Allen sat and meditated,
and on his way back he wrote the verses.

"I had seen the Lincoln statue many times," says Dr. Allen, "but,
somehow, I could not get started on the poem I knew could be written
around it." And Judge Stafford wrote to his friend in Newark: "I had
seen the Lincoln pew a score of times without poetic result, yet you
come on a one-day visit and carry away the inspiration needed."


                   LINCOLN'S CHURCH IN WASHINGTON

            Within the historic church both eye and soul
            Perceived it. 'Twas the pew where Lincoln sat--
            The only Lincoln God hath given to men--
            Olden among the modern seats of prayer,
            Dark like the 'sixties, place and past akin.
            All else has changed, but this remains the same,
            A sanctuary in a sanctuary.

            Where Lincoln prayed! What passion had his soul--
            Mixt faith and anguish melting into prayer
            Upon the burning altar of God's fane,
            A nation's altar even as his own.

            Where Lincoln prayed! Such worshipers as he
            Make thin ranks down the ages. Wouldst thou know
            His spirit suppliant? Then must thou feel
            War's fiery baptism, taste hate's bitter cup,
            Spend similar sweat of blood vicarious,
            And sound the cry, "If it be possible!"
            From stricken heart in new Gethsemane.

            Who saw him there are gone, as he is gone;
            The pew remains, with what God gave him there,
            And all the world through him. So let it be--
            One of the people's shrines.




                   [Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1858

       From a photograph in possession of Mr. Stuart Brown of
                       Springfield, Illinois]




John James Piatt was born in Indiana, March 1, 1835. His earliest
schooling was received at Rising Sun, in Indiana. At the age of
fourteen he was set to learn the printing business in the office of
the _Ohio State Journal_ at Columbus, Ohio, for a brief period, and at
the age of eighteen years first began to write verses. His poems were
chiefly on themes connected with his native West.


                           SONNET IN 1862

            Stern be the Pilot in the dreadful hour
            When a great nation, like a ship at sea
            With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee,
            Feels her last shudder if her helmsman cower;
            A godlike manhood be his mighty dower!
              Such and so gifted, Lincoln, may'st thou be
              With thy high wisdom's low simplicity
            And awful tenderness of voted power.
            From our hot records then thy name shall stand
              On Time's calm ledger out of passionate days--
            With the pure debt of gratitude begun,
              And only paid in never-ending praise--
            One of the many of a mighty land,
            Made by God's providence the Anointed One.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

     [Signed:  For Mrs. Lucy G. Speed, from whose pious hand I
               accepted the present of an Oxford Bible twenty
               years ago.

               Washington, D. C. October 3, 1861

                                                    A. Lincoln ]]




Lincoln once said: "When any church will inscribe over its altar, as
its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed
statement of the substance of both law and gospel, 'Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all
thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself', that church will I join with
all my heart and all my soul."


                     LINCOLN, SOLDIER OF CHRIST

                _From Macmillan's Magazine, England_

                Lincoln! When men would name a man
                  Just, unperturbed, magnanimous,
                Tried in the lowest seat of all,
                  Tried in the chief seat of the house--

                Lincoln! When men would name a man
                  Who wrought the great work of his age,
                Who fought, and fought the noblest fight,
                  And marshalled it from stage to stage.

                Victorious, out of dusk and dark,
                  And into dawn and on till day,
                Most humble when the pæans rang,
                  Least rigid when the enemy lay

                Prostrated for his feet to tread--
                  This name of Lincoln will they name,
                A name revered, a name of scorn,
                  Of scorn to sundry, not to fame.

                Lincoln; the man who freed the slave;
                  Lincoln, whom never self enticed;
                Slain Lincoln, worthy found to die
                  A soldier of the captain Christ.




                   [Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860

  Photographed by Brady at the time of the "Cooper Institute Speech,"
                          February, 1860]




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

                 Photograph by Gardner, Washington]




Rev. Hamilton Schuyler was born in Oswego, New York, 1862, and is a
son of the late Anthony Schuyler, who was for many years rector of
Grace Church, Orange, New Jersey. He belongs to the well-known family
of that name, being seventh in descent from Philip Peterse Schuyler,
founder of the family, who came to this country from Holland and
settled in Albany in 1650. He studied at Oxford University, England,
and the General Theological Seminary of New York. Has held positions
in Calvary Church, New York; Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island,
and was for several years dean of the Cathedral at Davenport, Iowa,
under the late Bishop Perry. He began his rectorship at Trenton in
February, 1900. Has written extensively for journals and periodicals.
Among the bound publications which bear his name as author are _A
Fisher of Men_, a biography of the late Churchill Satterlee, priest
and missionary, son of the first Bishop of Washington; _Studies in
English Church History_; _The Intellectual Crisis Confronting
Christianity_; and _A History of Trinity Church, Trenton_. In 1900 his
poem, _The Incapable_, won a prize of two hundred dollars offered by
the late Collis P. Huntington through the _New York Sun_, for the best
poems antithetical to Edwin Markham's _Man With the Hoe_. A volume of
Mr. Schuyler's verses, under the title _Within the Cloister's Shadow_,
was published in 1914.


                   A CHARACTERIZATION OF LINCOLN

                    _From Lincoln Centenary Ode_

                   Tall, ungainly, gaunt of limb,
                   Rudely Nature molded him.
                   Awkward form and homely face,
                   Owing naught to outward grace;
                   Yet, behind the rugged mien
                   Were a mind and soul serene,
                   And in deep-set eyes there shone
                   Genius that was all his own.
                   Humor quaint with pathos blent
                   To his speech attraction lent;
                   Telling phrase and homely quip
                   Falling lightly from his lip.
                   Eloquent of tongue, and clear,
                   Logical, devoid of fear,
                   Making plain whate'er was dense
                   By the light of common sense.
                   Tender as the bravest be,
                   Pitiful in high degree,
                   Wrathful only where offence
                   Led to grievous consequence;
                   Hating sham and empty show;
                   Chivalrous to beaten foe;
                   Ever patient in his ways;
                   Cheerful in the darkest days;
                   Not a demi-god or saint
                   Such as fancy loves to paint,
                   But a truly human man
                   Built on the heroic plan.




                 [Illustration: EMANCIPATION GROUP]


Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate
of the Freedman's Memorial Statue erected in Lincoln Park, Washington,
D. C., after a design by Thomas Ball. The group, which stands in Park
Square, represents the figure of a slave from whose limbs the broken
fetters have fallen, kneeling in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The
verses which follow were written for the unveiling of the statue,
December 9, 1879.


John Greenleaf Whittier, born December 17, 1807, in Haverhill,
Massachusetts. He lived on a farm until he reached the age of
eighteen, working a little at shoemaking and also writing poetry for
the _Haverhill Gazette_. Later he became editor of a number of papers,
and his poems in after life were full of patriotism and the love of
human freedom, all of which attained a strong hold on the hearts of
the people. He would have prevented war, if possible, with honor, but
when war came he wrote in support of the Union cause, displaying no
bitterness, and when the conflict was over he was most liberal and
conciliatory. He was one of the most popular of poets. He died
September 7, 1892.


                       THE EMANCIPATION GROUP

                  Amidst thy sacred effigies
                    Of old renown give place,
                  O city. Freedom-loved! to his
                    Whose hand unchained a race.

                  Take the worn frame, that rested not
                    Save in a martyr's grave;
                  The care-lined face, that none forgot,
                    Bent to the kneeling slave.

                  Let man be free! The mighty word
                    He spoke was not his own;
                  An impulse from the Highest stirred
                    These chiseled lips alone.

                  The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,
                    Along his pathway ran,
                  And Nature, through his voice, denied
                    The ownership of man.

                  We rest in peace where these sad eyes
                    Saw peril, strife, and pain;
                  His was the Nation's sacrifice,
                    And ours the priceless gain.

                  O symbol of God's will on earth
                    As it is done above
                  Bear witness to the cost and worth
                    Of justice and of love!

                  Stand in thy place and testify
                    To coming ages long,
                  That truth is stronger than a lie,
                    And righteousness than wrong.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

           Photograph by Brady, Washington, D. C., 1863]




Theron Brown, born at Willimantic, Connecticut, April 29, 1832.
Graduated at Hartford Theological Seminary in 1858; Newton Theological
Institution, 1859. Ordained in Baptist Ministry, 1859; Pastor South
Framingham, Massachusetts, 1859-62; Canton, Massachusetts, 1863-70; on
staff _Youth's Companion_ since 1870. Author various juvenile stories;
_Life Songs_ (poems), 1894; _Nameless Women of the Bible_, 1904; _The
Story of the Hymns and Tunes_, 1907; _Under the Mulberry Tree_ (a
novel), 1909; _The Birds of God_, 1911. He died February 14, 1914.


                           THE LIBERATOR

                When, scornful of a nation's rest,
                  The angry horns of Discord blew
                There came a giant from the West,
                  And found a giant's work to do.

                He saw, in sorrow--and in wrath--
                  A mighty empire in its strait,
                Torn like a planet in its path
                  To warring hemisphere of hate.

                Between the thunder-clouds he stood;
                  He harked to Ruin's battle-drum,
                And cried in patriot hardihood,
                  "Why do I wait? My hour has come!

                "Was it my fate, my lot, my woe
                  To be the Ruler of the land,
                Nor own my oath that long ago
                  I swore upon this heart and hand?

                "That vow, like barb from bowman's string,
                  Shall pierce sedition's secret plea:
                God grant the bloodless blow shall sting
                  Till brother's quarrels cease to be!

                "Should once the sudden wound provoke
                  New strife in anger's zone
                The clash may be the penal stroke
                  That makes a new Republic one."

                He wrote his Message--clear as light,
                  And bolder than a king's command--
                And when war's whirlwinds spent their might
                  There was no bondman in the land.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

           Photograph by Alexander Gardner, Washington, D. C.,
                           January 24, 1863]




                        TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN

                         _January 1, 1863_


          Lincoln, that with thy steadfast truth the sand
          Of men and time and circumstance dost sway!
          The slave-cloud dwindles on this golden day,
          And over all the pestilent southern land,
          Breathless, the dark expectant millions stand,
            To watch the northern sun rise on its way,
            Cleaving the stormy distance--every ray
          Sword-bright, sword-sharp, in God's invisible hand.

          Better with this great end, partial defeat,
            And jibings of the ignorant worldly-wise,
              Than laud and triumph won with shameful blows.
          The dead Past lies in its dead winding-sheet;
            The living Present droops with tearful eyes;
              But far beyond the awaiting Future glows.

                      _Edmund Ollier, in London (Eng.) Morning Star._




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

               Photograph by Brady, Washington, D. C.]




Charles G. Foltz was born at West Winfield, Herkimer County, New York,
September 9, 1837. His parents were Benjamin Foltz, a Presbyterian
clergyman, and Jane Harwood Foltz. In 1846 the family moved to
Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 1849 to Wisconsin, first to Rock County,
then to Walworth County, and in 1854 to Burlington, Racine County,
where he has since resided.


                        ON FREEDOM'S SUMMIT

            On freedom's summit, Oh, how grand
            Stood Lincoln ruler of our land,
              As he issued the sublime command
              Let the enslaved be free.
            Ere long he saw the Bondmen rise;
            Ere long as Freedmen seize the prize,
              The precious boon of liberty.

            A backward glance he cast
            Into the valley of the past,
              Amid the shade and gloom
              Discerning slavery's tomb.
            Out from the depths his upturned eyes
            Beheld the fleeing clouds the brighter skies.
              Upon him shone a glory like the sun,
              Reflecting "peace toward all, malice toward none."

            As thus he filled his high exalted place,
            The brave emancipator of a race,
              He thought of the fierce struggle and the victory
              And humbly deemed himself to be
              Only the instrument of a Divine decree.
            Rejoicing in the faith of brighter coming days
            His "fervent prayers" were merged in those of praise.

            Like unto psalmists of the olden time
              His uttered thoughts inspired the nation's song,
            Throughout the land the chorus rose sublime,
              The exultant triumph of the right o'er wrong.

            "Behold, what God the Lord hath wrought,"
            More than we asked, or hoped, or thought.
              Through the "Red sea" of blood and carnage
              He brought our nation free of bondage.
            With Moses sing, yea shout O North;
            With Miriam answer back O South:
              That "He hath triumphed gloriously."

                  .       .       .       .       .

           Oh why the sudden blotting out of light?
           The cloud of sorrow, dark as Plutonian night,
           That cast its lengthening shadow o'er the land;
           Changing to funeral dirge the choral grand.
             Swift as the typhoon's breath--
             The harbinger of death--
               The cruel deed of hate
           Swept the grand chief away.
           Unto this day, and ever aye,
               The nation mourns her martyr's fate.




               [Illustration: Lincoln at Gettysburg]


                ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION
                   OF THE CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG


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 battlefield 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 thus far 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 their 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, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.

  November 19, 1863.                             ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


"Undoubtedly there were many in the audience who fully appreciated the
beauty of the President's address, and many of those who read it on
the following day perceived its wondrous character; but it is apparent
that its full force and grandeur were not generally recognized then,
either by its auditors or its readers. Not until the war had ended and
the great leader had fallen did the nation realize that this speech
had given to Gettysburg another claim to immortality and to American
eloquence its highest glory."--From the monograph on the Gettysburg
Address, by Maj. William H. Lambert.




Bayard Taylor, born in Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania,
on the 11th of January, 1825. Died in Berlin, Germany, on the 19th of
December, 1878. His boyhood was passed on a farm near Kennett. He
learned to read at four, began to write at an early age, and from his
twelfth year wrote poems, novels and historical essays, but mostly
poems. In 1837 the family moved to Westchester, and there and at
Unionville he had five years of high-school training. His first poem
printed was contributed to the _Saturday Evening Post_, in 1841, and
those to the _New York Tribune_ from abroad, written in 1844, were
widely read and shortly after his return were collected and published
in _Views Afoot, or Europe Seen With Knapsack and Staff_. With a
friend he bought a printing office in 1846, and began to publish the
_Phoenixville Pioneer_, but it was as a poet that he excelled above
most other vocations.


                           GETTYSBURG ODE

          After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake
          Here, from the shadows of impending death,
          Those words of solemn breath,
              What voice may fitly break
          The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him?
          We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim,
              And, as a Nation's litany, repeat
          The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete,
          Noble as then, but now more sadly sweet:
          "Let us, the Living, rather dedicate
          Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they
          Thus far advanced so nobly on its way,
              And saved the periled State!
          Let us, upon this field where they, the brave,
          Their last full measure of devotion gave,
          Highly resolve they have not died in vain!--
          That, under God, the Nation's later birth
          Of freedom, and the people's gain
          Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane
          And perish from the circle of the earth!"
          From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire
          To light her faded fire,
              And into wandering music turn
          Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern?
          His voice all elegies anticipated;
              For, whatsoe'er the strain,
              We hear that one refrain:
          "We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!"




    [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SON THOMAS ("TAD")]




Benjamin Franklin Taylor, born at Lowville, New York, July 19, 1819.
He was for several years connected with the _Chicago Evening Journal_.
He wrote _Pictures of Life in Camp and Field_ (1871); _The World on
Wheels_, etc. (1874); _Songs of Yesterday_ (1877); _Between the Gates_
(1878); _Summer Savory_, etc. (1879); _Dulce Domum_ (1884);
_Theophilus Trent_, a novel (1887); etc. Among his best known poems
are: _Isle of the Long Ago_, _Rhymes of the River_, and _The Old
Village Choir_.


                     LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL

     The following is an excerpt from a _Centennial Poem_ read by
     B. F. Taylor on Decoration Day (May 30, 1876), on the
     occasion of the centennial celebration by the Department of
     the Potomac, Grand Army of the Republic, at Arlington
     Cemetery, Washington, D. C.

          They see the pilgrims to the Springfield tomb--
            Be proud today, oh, portico of gloom!--
            Where lies the man in solitary state
            Who never caused a tear but when he died
          And set the flags around the world half-mast--
          The gentle Tribune and so grandly great
            That e'en the utter avarice of Death
            That claims the world, and will not be denied,
            Could only rob him of his mortal breath.
          How strange the splendor, though the man be past!
          His noblest inspiration was his last.
          The statues of the Capitol are there.
          As when he stood upon the marble stair
          And said those words so tender, true and just,
          A royal psalm that took mankind on trust--
          Those words that will endure and he in them,
          While May wears flowers upon her broidered hem,
          And all that marble snows and drifts to dust:
          "Fondly do we hope, fervently we pray
          That this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away:
          With charity for all, with malice toward none,
            With firmness in the right
            As God shall give us light,
          Let us finish the work already begun,
          Care for the battle sons, the Nation's wounds to bind,
          Care for the helpless ones that they will leave behind,
          Cherish it we will, achieve it if we can,
          A just and lasting peace, forever unto man!"
          Amid old Europe's rude and thundering years,
            When people strove as battle-clouds are driven,
          One calm white angel of a day appears
            In every year a gift direct from Heaven,
          Wherein, from setting sun to setting sun
          No thought of deed of bitterness was done.
          "Day of the Truce of God!" Be this day ours,
            Until perpetual peace flows like a river
          And hopes as fragrant as these tribute flowers
            Fill all the land forever and forever!




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

              Photograph by Brady, Washington, D. C.]




Hermann Hagedorn, born in New York, July 18, 1882. Instructor in
English at Harvard in 1909-1911. Wrote several one-act plays which
were produced by the Harvard Dramatic Club, and by clubs of other
colleges. Author of _The Silver Blade_ (a play in verse), _The Woman
of Corinth_, _A Troop of the Guard_ and other poems.


                         OH, PATIENT EYES!

           Oh, patient eyes! oh, bleeding, mangled heart!
           Oh, hero, whose wide soul, defying chains,
           Swept at each army's head,
               Swept to the charge and bled,
           Gathering in one too sorrow-laden heart
             All woes, all pains;
             The anguish of the trusted hope that wanes,
           The soldier's wound, the lonely mourner's smart.
           He knew the noisy horror of the fight,
           From dawn to dusk and through the hideous night
             He heard the hiss of bullets, the shrill scream
               Of the wide-arching shell,
             Scattering at Gettysburg or by Potomac's stream,
           Like summer flowers, the pattering rain of death;
           With every breath,
             He tasted battle and in every dream,
               Trailing like mists from gaping walls of hell,
               He heard the thud of heroes as they fell.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

                        Photograph by Brady]




Margaret Elizabeth Sangster, born at New Rochelle, New York, February
22, 1838. Educated privately, chiefly in New York. Became contributor
to leading periodicals; also editor of _Hearth and Home_, 1871-73;
_Christian at Work_, 1873-79; _The Christian Intelligencer_ since
1879; postmistress _Harper's Young People_, 1882-89; editor _Harper's
Bazar_, 1889-99; staff contributor _Christian Herald_ since 1894;
_Ladies' Home Journal_, 1899-1905; _Woman's Home Companion_ since
1905. Author _Poems of the Household_; _Home Fairies and Heart
Flowers_; _On the Road Home_; _Easter Bells_; _Winsome Womanhood_;
_Little Knights and Ladies_; _Lyrics of Love_; _When Angels Come to
Men_; _Good Manners for All Occasions_; _The Story Bible_; _Fairest
Girlhood_; _From My Youth Up_; _Happy School Days_. She died June 4,
1912.


                          ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                     (_February 12, 1809-1909_)

      Child of the boundless prairie, son of the virgin soil,
      Heir to the bearing of burdens, brother to them that toil;
      God and Nature together shaped him to lead in the van,
      In the stress of her wildest weather when the Nation needed
            a Man.

      Eyes of a smoldering fire, heart of a lion at bay,
      Patience to plan for tomorrow, valor to serve for today,
      Mournful and mirthful and tender, quick as a flash with a jest,
      Hiding with gibe and great laughter the ache that was dull
            in his breast.

      Met were the Man and the Hour--Man who was strong for the shock--
      Fierce were the lightnings unleashed; in the midst, he stood
            fast as a rock.
      Comrade he was and commander, he who was meant for the time,
      Iron in council and action, simple, aloof, and sublime.

      Swift slip the years from their tether, centuries pass like a
            breath,
      Only some lives are immortal, challenging darkness and death.
      Hewn from the stuff of the martyrs, write on the stardust
            his name,
      Glowing, untarnished, transcendent, high on the records of Fame.

      Oh, man of many sorrows, 'twas your blood
        That flowed at Chickamauga, at Bull Run,
      Vicksburg, Antietam, and the gory wood
      And Wilderness of ravenous Deaths that stood
        Round Richmond like a ghostly garrison:
          Your blood for those who won,
            For those who lost, your tears!
            For you the strife, the fears,
          For us, the sun!
      For you the lashing winds and the beating rain in your eyes,
      For us the ascending stars and the wide, unbounded skies.

      Oh, man of storms! Patient and kingly soul!
        Oh, wise physician of a wasted land!
        A nation felt upon its heart your hand,
      And lo, your hand hath made the shattered, whole,
      With iron clasp your hand hath held the wheel
      Of the lurching ship, on tempest waves no keel
        Hath ever sailed.
        A grim smile held your lips when strong men quailed.
        You strove alone with chaos and prevailed;
      You felt the grinding shock and did not reel,
      And, ah, your hand that cut the battle's path
      Wide with the devastating plague of wrath,
        Your bleeding hand, gentle with pity yet,
        Did not forget
      To bless, to succor, and to heal.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

     Photograph by Alexander Gardner, Washington, D. C., 1864]




Wilbur Dick Nesbit was born at Xenia, Ohio, September 16, 1871.
Educated in the public schools at Cedarville, Ohio. Was printer and
reporter on various Ohio and Indiana papers until 1898; verse writer
and paragrapher _Baltimore American_, 1899-1902; since that year
writer of verse and humor _Chicago Evening Post_ and other newspapers,
contributor of stories and poems to magazines and periodicals. Author
of _Little Henry's Slate_, 1903; _The Trail to Boyland and Other
Poems_, 1904; _An Alphabet of History_, 1905; _The Gentleman Ragman_,
1906; _A Book of Poems_, 1906; _The Land of Make-Believe and Other
Christmas Poems_, 1907; _A Friend or Two_, 1908; _The Loving Cup_
(compilation), 1909; _The Old, Old Wish_, 1911; _My Company of
Friends_, 1911; _If the Heart be Glad_, 1911; co-author with Otto
Hauerbach of _The Girl of My Dreams_, a musical comedy, 1910.


                          THE MAN LINCOLN

               Not as the great who grow more great
                 Until from us they are apart--
               He walks with us in man's estate;
                 We know his was a brother heart.
               The marching years may render dim
                 The humanness of other men;
               Today we are akin to him
                 As they who knew him best were then.

               Wars have been won by mail-clad hands,
                 Realms have been ruled by sword-hedged kings,
               But he above these others stands
                 As one who loved the common things;
               The common faith of man was his,
                 The common faith of man he had--
               For this today his grave face is
                 A face half joyous and half sad.

               A man of earth! Of earthy stuff,
                 As honest as the fruitful soil,
               Gnarled as the friendly trees, and rough
                 As hillsides that had known his toil;
               Of earthy stuff--let it be told,
                 For earth-born men rise and reveal
               A courage fair as beaten gold
                 And the enduring strength of steel.

               So now he dominates our thought.
                 This humble great man holds us thus
               Because of all he dreamed and wrought;
                 Because he is akin to us.
               He held his patient trust in truth
                 While God was working out His plan,
               And they that were his foes, forsooth,
                 Came to pay tribute to the Man.

               Not as the great who grow more great
                 Until they have a mystic fame--
               No stroke of fortune nor of fate
                 Gave Lincoln his undying name.
               A common man, earth-bred, earth-born,
                 One of the breed who work and wait--
               His was a soul above all scorn.
                 His was a heart above all hate.




            [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT ANTIETAM

       Photograph taken on the battlefield, September, 1862,
            with General McClellan and Allen Pinkerton]




Edwin Arlington Robinson, born at Head Tide, Maine, December 22, 1869.
Educated at Gardiner, Maine, and Harvard University, 1891-3. Member
National Institute Arts and Letters. Author: _The Torrent_ and _The
Night Before_, 1896; _The Children of the Night_, 1897, 1905; _Captain
Craig_ (poems), _The Town Down the River_, 1910.


                             THE MASTER

                             (LINCOLN)

                 A flying word from here and there
                   Had sown the name at which we sneered,
                 But soon the name was everywhere,
                   To be reviled and then revered:
                 A presence to be loved and feared,
                   We cannot hide it, or deny
                 That we, the gentlemen who jeered,
                   May be forgotten by and by.

                 He came when days were perilous
                   And hearts of men were sore beguiled;
                 And having made his note of us,
                   He pondered and was reconciled.
                 Was ever master yet so mild
                   As he, and so untamable?
                 We doubted, even when he smiled,
                   Not knowing what he knew so well.

                 He knew that undeceiving fate
                   Would shame us whom he served unsought;
                 He knew that he must wince and wait--
                   The jest of those for whom he fought;
                 He knew devoutly what he thought
                   Of us and of our ridicule;
                 He knew that we must all be taught
                   Like little children in a school.

                 We gave a glamour to the task
                   That he encountered and saw through,
                 But little of us did he ask,
                   And little did we ever do.
                 And what appears if we review
                   The season when we railed and chaffed?
                 It is the face of one who knew
                   That we were learning while we laughed.

                 The face that in our vision feels
                   Again the venom that we flung,
                 Transfigured to the world reveals
                   The vigilance to which we clung.
                 Shrewd, hallowed, harassed, and among
                   The mysteries that are untold,
                 The face we see was never young
                   Nor could it ever have been old.

                 For he, to whom we had applied
                   Our shopman's test of age and worth,
                 Was elemental when he died,
                   As he was ancient at his birth:
                 The saddest among kings of earth,
                   Bowed with a galling crown, this man
                 Met rancor with a cryptic mirth,
                   Laconic--and Olympian.

                 The love, the grandeur, and the fame
                   Are bounded by the world alone;
                 The calm, the smouldering, and the flame
                   Of awful patience were his own;
                 With him they are forever flown
                   Past all our fond self-shadowings,
                 Wherewith we cumber the Unknown
                   As with inept, Icarian wings.

                 For we were not as other men:
                   'Twas ours to soar and his to see.
                 But we are coming down again,
                   And we shall come down pleasantly;
                 Nor shall we longer disagree
                   On what it is to be sublime,
                 But flourish in our perigee
                   And have one Titan at a time.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

              Photograph by Gardner, Washington, D. C.
          Taken when Lincoln appointed General U. S. Grant
              Commander-in-chief of the Army, in 1864]




                              LINCOLN

                        _By Harriet Monroe_


            And, lo! leading a blessed host comes one
            Who held a warring nation in his heart;
            Who knew love's agony, but had no part
            In love's delight; whose mighty task was done
            Through blood and tears that we might walk in joy,
            And this day's rapture own no sad alloy.
            Around him heirs of bliss, whose bright brows wear
            Palm leaves amid their laurels ever fair.
            Gaily they come, as though the drum
            Beat out the call their glad hearts knew so well;
            Brothers once more, dear as of yore,
            Who in a noble conflict nobly fell.
            Their blood washed pure yon banner in the sky,
            And quenched the brands laid 'neath these arches high--
            The brave who, having fought, can never die.




               [Illustration: PRESIDENT-ELECT LINCOLN

           From a photograph taken with his Secretaries,
                   John G. Nicolay and John Hay,
                    Springfield, Illinois, 1861]




Walt Mason, born at Columbus, Ontario, May 4, 1862. Self educated.
Came to the United States 1880. Connected with the _Atchinson Globe_
1885-7, later with _Lincoln_ (Nebraska) _State Journal_ and other
papers; editorial paragrapher _Evening News_, Washington, D. C., 1893;
associated with William Allen White on _Emporia_ (Kansas) _Gazette_
since 1907. His rhymes and prose poems are widely copied in America.


                        THE EYES OF LINCOLN

               Sad eyes that were patient and tender,
                 Sad eyes that were steadfast and true,
               And warm with the unchanging splendor
                 Of courage no ills could subdue!

               Eyes dark with the dread of the morrow,
                 And woe for the day that was gone,
               The sleepless companions of sorrow,
                 The watchers that witnessed the dawn.

               Eyes tired from the clamor and goading
                 And dim from the stress of the years,
               And hallowed by pain and foreboding
                 And strained by repression of tears.

               Sad eyes that were wearied and blighted
                 By visions of sieges and wars
               Now watch o'er a country united
                 From the luminous slopes of the stars!




              [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN IN 1862

          Photograph by Matthew Brady, Washington, D. C.]




Arthur Guiterman, author, born of American parentage, at Vienna,
Austria, November 20, 1871. Editorial work on _Woman's Home
Companion_, _Literary Digest_ and other magazines since 1891. Author
of _Betel Nuts_, 1907; _Guest Book_, 1908; _Rubiayat_, including the
_Literary Omar_, 1909, and _Orestes_ (with Andre Tridon), 1909.
Contributor chiefly of ballad, lyric verse and short stories to
magazines and newspapers.


                         HE LEADS US STILL

          Dare we despair? Through all the nights and days
            Of lagging war he kept his courage true.
          Shall Doubt befog our eyes? A darker haze
            But proved the faith of him who ever knew
          That Right must conquer. May we cherish hate
            For our poor griefs, when never word nor deed
          Of rancor, malice, spite, of low or great,
            In his large soul one poison-drop could breed?

          He leads us still. O'er chasms yet unspanned
            Our pathway lies; the work is but begun;
          But we shall do our part and leave our land
            The mightier for noble battles won.
          Here Truth must triumph, Honor must prevail;
          The nation Lincoln died for cannot fail!




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

           Photograph by Brady, Washington, D. C., 1864]




S. Weir Mitchell, born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 15,
1829. Educated in grammar school, and University of Pennsylvania, but
was not graduated because of illness during senior year; Doctor of
Medicine, Jefferson Medical College, 1850; LL.D., Harvard, 1886;
Edinburgh, 1895; Princeton, 1896; Toronto, 1896; Jefferson Medical
College, Philadelphia, 1910. Established practice in Philadelphia.
Author of many works on treatment of diseases. _Collected Poems_,
1896-1909; _Youth of Washington_, 1904; _A Diplomatic Adventure_,
1905; _The Mind Reader_, 1907; _A Christmas Venture_, 1907; _John
Sherwood, Ironmaster_, 1911.


                              LINCOLN

            Chained by stern duty to the rock of State,
            His spirit armed in mail of rugged mirth,
            Ever above, though ever near to earth,
            Yet felt his heart the cruel tongues that sate
            Base appetites and, foul with slander, wait
            Till the keen lightnings bring the awful hour
            When wounds and suffering shall give them power.
            Most was he like to Luther, gay and great,
            Solemn and mirthful, strong of heart and limb.
            Tender and simple, too; he was so near
            To all things human that he cast out fear,
            And, ever simpler, like a little child,
            Lived in unconscious nearness unto Him
            Who always on earth's little ones hath smiled.




              [Illustration: STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

            In the Public Square, Hodgenville, Kentucky.
                    Adolph A. Weinman, Sculptor]




George Alfred Townsend was born in Georgetown, Delaware, January 30,
1841. In 1860 he began writing for the press and speaking in public,
and in 1860 adopted the profession of journalism. In 1862 he became a
war correspondent for the _New York World_, the _Chicago Tribune_ and
other papers, and made an enviable reputation as a descriptive writer.
He also published a number of books both of prose and poetry.


                          ABRAHAM LINCOLN

               The peaceful valley reaching wide,
                 The wild war stilled on every hand;
               On Pisgah's top our prophet died,
                 In sight of promised land.

               Low knelt the foeman's serried fronts,
                 His cannon closed their lips of brass,--
               The din of arms hushed all at once
                 To let this good man pass.

               A cheerful heart he wore alway,
                 Though tragic years clashed on the while;
               Death sat behind him at the play--
                 His last look was a smile.

               No battle-pike his march imbrued,
                 Unarmed he went midst martial mails,
               The footsore felt their hopes renewed
                 To hear his homely tales.

               His single arm crushed wrong and thrall
                 That grand good will we only dreamed,
               Two races wept around his pall,
                 One saved and one redeemed.

               The trampled flag he raised again,
                 And healed our eagle's broken wing;
               The night that scattered armed men
                 Saw scorpions rise to sting.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

           Photograph by Brady, Washington, D. C., 1864]




Paul Lawrence Dunbar, born of negro parents at Dayton, Ohio, June 27,
1872. Was graduated at the Dayton High School in 1891, and since then
has devoted himself to literature and journalism. He has written _Oak
and Ivy_ (poems); _Lyrics of Lowly Life_ (poems), and _The Uncalled_
(a novel). Since 1898 he has been on the staff of the Librarian of
Congress.


                              LINCOLN

         Hurt was the Nation with a mighty wound,
         And all her ways were filled with clam'rous sound.
         Wailed loud the South with unremitting grief,
         And wept the North that could not find relief.
         Then madness joined its harshest tone to strife:
         A minor note swelled in the song of life
         Till, stirring with the love that filled his breast,
         But still, unflinching at the Right's behest
         Grave Lincoln came, strong-handed, from afar,--
         The mighty Homer of the lyre of war!
         'Twas he who bade the raging tempest cease,
         Wrenched from his strings the harmony of peace,
         Muted the strings that made the discord,--Wrong,
         And gave his spirit up in thund'rous song.
         Oh, mighty Master of the mighty lyre!
         Earth heard and trembled at thy strains of fire:
         Earth learned of thee what Heaven already knew,
         And wrote thee down among her treasured few!




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

          Photograph by Gardner, Washington, D. C., 1865]




Alice Cary was born in Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 20,
1820. Her first book of poems, with her sister Phoebe, was published
in 1850. Her poems and prose writings were pictures from life and
nature, among which were _Pictures of Memory_, _Mulberry Hill_,
_Coming Home_ and _Nobility_. She died at her home in New York City,
February 12, 1871. This poem is inscribed to the _London Punch_.


                          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!




                  [Illustration: 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!




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

           Photograph by Brady, Washington, D. C., 1865]




Frederick Lucian Hosmer, born at Framingham, Massachusetts, October
16, 1840. Graduated at Harvard in 1869. Ordained in Unitarian Ministry
at Northboro, Massachusetts, in 1869. Author of _The Way of Life_,
_The Thought of God, in Hymns and Poems_.


                              LINCOLN

                The prairies to the mountains call,
                  The mountains to the sea;
                From shore to shore a nation keeps
                  Her martyr's memory.

                Though lowly born, the seal of God
                  Was in that rugged face;
                Still from the humble Nazareths come
                  The Saviours of the race.

                With patient heart and vision clear
                  He wrought through trying days--
                "Malice toward none, with Charity for all,"
                  Unswerved by blame or praise.

                And when the morn of peace broke through
                  The battle's cloud and din,
                He hailed with joy the promised land,
                  He might now enter in.

                He seemed as set by God apart,
                  The winepress trod alone;
                He stands forth an uncrowned king,
                  A people's heart his throne.

                Land of our loyal love and hope,
                  O Land he died to save,
                Bow down, renew today thy vows
                  Beside his martyr grave!




Charles Monroe Dickinson, born at Lowville, New York, November 15,
1842. Educated at Fairfield (New York), Seminary and Lowville Academy.
Admitted to the bar in 1865; practiced law in the State of
Pennsylvania, at Binghamton, New York, and in New York City 1865-77,
when he abandoned the profession because of broken health. Editor and
proprietor of _Binghamton Republican_, 1878-1911. In 1892, upon his
suggestion and initiative the various news organizations were combined
into the present Associated Press. Presidential elector, 1896; United
States Consul-General to Turkey, 1897-1906; Diplomatic agent to
Bulgaria, 1901-1903. While acting in this capacity the American
missionary, Ellen M. Stone, was carried off by brigands, but released
through his settlement and efforts. Member board to draft regulations
for government of American consular service 1906; American
Consul-General at-large, 1906-October 1, 1908. Author of _History of
Dickinson Family_, 1885; _The Children and Other Verses_, 1889; part
of political history of State of New York, 1911.


                          ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                If any one hath doubt or fear
                  That this is Freedom's chosen clime--
                That God hath sown and planted here
                  The richest harvest field of Time--
                Let him take heart, throw off his fears,
                As he looks back a hundred years.

                Cities and fields and wealth untold,
                  With equal rights before the law;
                And, better than all lands and gold--
                  Such as the old world never saw--
                Freedom and peace, the right to be,
                And honor to those who made us free.

                Our greatness did not happen so,
                  We owe it not to chance or fate;
                In furnace heat, by blow on blow,
                  Were forged the things that make us great;
                And men still live who bore that heat,
                And felt those deadly hammers beat.

                Not in the pampered courts of kings,
                  Not in the homes that rich men keep,
                God calls His Davids with their slings,
                  Or wakes His Samuels from their sleep;
                But from the homes of toil and need
                Calls those who serve as well as lead.

                Such was the hero of our race;
                  Skilled in the school of common things,
                He felt the sweat on Labor's face,
                  He knew the pinch of want, the sting
                The bondman felt, and all the wrong
                The weak had suffered from the strong.

                God passed the waiting centuries by,
                  And kept him for our time of need--
                To lead us with his courage high--
                  To make our country free indeed;
                Then, that he be by none surpassed,
                God crowned him martyr at the last.

                Let speech and pen and song proclaim
                  Our grateful praise this natal morn;
                Time hath preserved no nobler name,
                  And generations yet unborn
                Shall swell the pride of those who can
                Claim Lincoln as their countryman.




                   [Illustration: FORD'S THEATRE]


The building is a plain brick structure, three stories high,
seventy-one feet front and one hundred feet deep. It was originally
constructed and occupied as a Baptist Church, but at the beginning of
the war was converted into a theatre, though never used for that
purpose after the assassination of Lincoln. The government purchased
it for one hundred thousand dollars, and it is now used as a branch of
the Record and Pension Division of the War Department. President
Lincoln was shot by J. Wilkes Booth at 10.20 o'clock P.M. on the
evening of April 14, 1865, while seated in his private box in the
theatre.


                        SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

                        _By Robert Leighton_

            "Sic semper tyrannis!" the assassin cried,
            As Lincoln fell. O villain! who than he
            More lived to set both slave and tyrant free?
            Or so enrapt with plans of freedom died,
            That even thy treacherous deed shall glance aside
              And do the dead man's will by land and sea;
              Win bloodless battles, and make that to be
            Which to his living mandate was denied!
            Peace to that gentle heart! The peace he sought
              For all mankind, nor for it dies in vain.
            Rest to the uncrowned king, who, toiling, brought
              His bleeding country through that dreadful reign;
            Who, living, earned a world's revering thought,
              And, dying, leaves his name without a stain.

           _Liverpool, England,
               May 5, 1865_




                   [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                Foully assassinated, April 14, 1865]


Tom Taylor wrote the following poem, which appeared in the _London
Punch_, May 6, 1865. The engraving is a facsimile of the one published
in the paper at the head of the poem.


                ABRAHAM LINCOLN, FOULLY ASSASSINATED

          You lay a wreath on murdered LINCOLN'S bier,
            _You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
          Broad for self-complacent British sneer,
            His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

          His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair,
            His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,
          His lack of all we prize as debonair,
            Of power or will to shine, of art to please,

          _You_, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,
            Judging each step, as though the way were plain:
          Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,
            Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain.

          Beside this corpse, that bears for winding sheet
            The Stars and Stripes, he lived to rear anew,
          Between the mourners at his head and feet,
            Say, scurrile-jester, is there room for _you_?

          Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
            To lame my pencil, and confute my pen--
          To make me own this hind of princes peer,
            This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

          My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue,
            Noting how to occasion's height he rose,
          How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true,
            How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.

          How humble, yet how hopeful he could be;
            How in good fortune and in ill the same;
          Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,
            Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

          He went about his work--such work as few
            Ever had laid on head and heart and hand--
          As one who knows, where there's a task to do,
            Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command.

          Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,
            That God makes instruments to work His will,
          If but that will we can arrive to know,
            Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

          So he went forth to battle, on the side
            That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,
          As in his peasant boyhood he had plied
            His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights--

          The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,
            The iron-bark that turned the lumberer's axe,
          The rapid, that o'erbears the boatmen's toil,
            The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

          The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear--
            Such were the needs that helped his youth to train;
          Rough culture--but such trees large fruit may bear,
            If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

          So he grew up, a destined work to do,
            And lived to do it--four long-suffering years;
          Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,
            And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,

          The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
            And took both with the same unwavering mood;
          Till, as he came on light from darking days,
            And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

          A felon hand, between the goal and him,
            Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,--
          And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,
            Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

          The words of mercy were upon his lips,
            Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,
          When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
            To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men.

          The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
            Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!
          Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high,
            Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

          A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before
            By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt
          If more of horror or disgrace they bore;
            But thy foul crime, like CAIN'S stands darkly out.

          Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,
            Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven;
          And with the martyr's crown crownest a life
            With much to praise, little to be forgiven!




                [Illustration: DEATHBED OF LINCOLN]


Immediately after the President was shot in Ford's Theatre he was
carried across the street to the house of William Petersen and placed
on a single bed in a room at the end of the hall. All through that
weary night the watchers stood by the bedside. He was unconscious
every moment from the time the bullet entered his head until Dr.
Robert King Stone, the family physician, announced at twenty-two
minutes after seven on the following morning that he had breathed his
last (April 15, 1865). Upon this Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary
of War, in a low voice said: "_Now He Belongs to the Ages_."


                            THE DEATHBED

  Silence falls, unbroken save by sobs of strong men
  In that room, where Lincoln, at the morning hour's chime
  Passed out into the unknown from the world of human ken.
  Gone his body and his life work from the world inclosed by time;
  But in the silence that was falling after breath of broken prayer,
  Words eternal broke the quiet like a bell toll on the air;
  Never in the world's wide story, wiser spoke nor Prophet, spoke nor
      Sages,
  Than these words that broke the silence: "He belongs now to the Ages!"

  "To the Ages!" well you spoke it, Stanton of the massive mind!
  He belongs, the years have shown it, to the world of human kind!
  Heard his story, where'er hearts throb o'er the world's far spreading
      way;
  Heard his story, children listen at the closing of the day;
  Heard his story, lovers speak it in their hushed and saddened tones
  As they wander in the twilight, dreaming of their coming homes;
  Heard his story, statesmen tell it, with a thrill of pride and truth;
  Heard his story, old men speak it to the country's growing youth.
  And the years have shown the Prophets, and the years have shown the
      Sages;
  Writ in fire these words of wisdom, "He belongs now to the Ages!"




                   [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                             President]


                   [Illustration: EDWIN M. STANTON

                          Secretary of War]


Marion Mills Miller was born at Eaton, Ohio, February 27, 1864. He was
graduated from Princeton in 1886, and for several years thereafter was
an instructor there in the English department. In 1889 he received the
degree of Doctor of Literature from his Alma Mater. Since 1893 he has
been engaged in literary and social reform work in New York City. He
has published some verse and fiction, but his most notable work has
been in the fields of translation and history. He has edited _The
Classics--Greek and Latin_ (15 volumes), published in 1909, and _Great
Debates in American History_ (14 volumes), published in 1913.

In 1907 he edited the Centenary Edition of _The Life and Works of
Abraham Lincoln_ in 10 volumes, logically arranged for ready
reference. The _Life of Lincoln_ was published separately in 1908 in
two volumes. It is based on a manuscript by Henry C. Whitney, whose
name it bears as author, although the second volume, _Lincoln, the
President_, was largely written by Dr. Miller. The late Major William
H. Lambert, president of the Lincoln Fellowship, called it "the best
of the shorter biographies of Lincoln." Dr. Miller has also edited
_The Wisdom of Lincoln_ (1908), a small book of extracts from
Lincoln's speeches and writings. He wrote the following poem, "Lincoln
and Stanton," especially for THE POETS' LINCOLN.

The first reference in it is to the Manny-McCormick case over the
patent rights of the reaping machine, in which Lincoln had been at
first selected as principal pleader, but was superseded by Edwin M.
Stanton. Having thoroughly prepared himself, he offered his assistance
to Stanton, but was brusquely repulsed. He was so hurt that he felt
like leaving the court room, but decided, in loyalty to his client, to
remain, and, leaving his place among counsel, took a seat in the
audience. Despite his injured feelings he was filled with admiration
for Stanton's able and successful conduct of the case. Lincoln,
probably referring to a slur of Stanton reported to him, said that he
would have to go back to Illinois and "study more law," since the
"college-bred" lawyers were pushing hard the "cornfield" ones.

The second reference is to Stanton's criticism of Lincoln's
conservative course during the first months of his Presidency; "that
imbecile at the White House," he called him. Stanton as
Attorney-General at the close of Buchanan's administration had done
effective work in foiling the plans of the Confederacy, and he
believed in forceful measures to put down the rebellion in its
incipiency.

The third reference is to the virtually enforced resignation of Simon
Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War, and Lincoln's choice to
succeed him of Stanton, whom he realized to be the best equipped man
in the country for the place.

The fourth reference is to Stanton's remark by the bedside of Lincoln
as the stricken President ceased breathing: "There lies the greatest
leader of men the world ever saw."


                        LINCOLN AND STANTON

            Lincoln had cause one man alone to hate:
              A fellow-lawyer, lacking in all grace,
              Who cast uncalled-for insult in his face
            When Lincoln as his colleague, with innate
            Courtesy, proffered aid. With pride inflate
              The scornful Stanton waved him to his place,
              Snapping, "I need no help to try this case";
            And "cornfield lawyer" muttered of his mate.

            And when, as captain of the Union ship,
              Lincoln drew sail before the gathering storm
                Till favoring winds the shrouds unfurled should fill,
            Stanton again curled his contemptuous lip
              And, with the impatience of a patriot warm,
                Sneered at the helmsman, "craven imbecile."

            Laid was the course at length; the sails untried
              Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil.
              Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil
            And ever higher surges war's red tide.
            The mate who should the captain's care divide
              Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil,
              A man be found able to bear the toil
            And stand, to steer the ship, by Lincoln's side?

            Stanton he called! The bitter choice he made
              For country, not himself. The ship was driven
                By the great twain through war's abyss, again
            Into calm seas. Then Lincoln low was laid,
              And Stanton paid him highest tribute given
                To mortal: "Mightiest leader among men!"




                [Illustration: THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

   1 President Lincoln. 2 Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
   Navy. 3 John Hay, Esq., President's Private Secretary. 4 Hon.
   E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War. 5 Rev. Dr. Gurley. 6 Gen.
   Farnsworth, M. C. from Illinois. 7 Governor Ogilsby of Illinois.
   8 General Todd. 9 Rufus Andrews, Esq. 10 Hon. W. T. Otto,
   Assistant Secretary of the Interior. 11 Hon. W. Denison,
   Postmaster-General. 12 Judge D. K. Carter. 13 Major-General
   Halleck. 14 Captain Robert Lincoln. 15 Dr. Leale. 16 Hon. Charles
   Sumner. 17 Dr. Crane, Assistant Surgeon-General. 18 Governor
   Farwell, of Wisconsin. 19 Hon. J. P. Usher, Secretary of the
   Interior. 20 Major-General Augur. 21 Major-General Meigs. 22
   Maunsel B. Field, Esq. 23 Hon. Schuyler Colfax. 24 Hon. James
   Speed, Attorney-General. 25 Hon. H. McCullough, Secretary of the
   Treasury 26 Dr. R. K. Stone. 27 Surgeon-General Barnes.]




             [Illustration: HOUSE IN WHICH LINCOLN DIED

                         Washington, D. C.]


           [Illustration: JOSEPHINE OLDROYD TIEFENTHALER

            Born July 17, 1896. Died February 20, 1908]


Robert Mackay and his wife visited this historic house in 1902. They
were met at the door and escorted through the various rooms containing
the Collection by Little Josephine, and were deeply impressed at the
knowledge she exhibited of Lincoln and the Collection, although she
was but six years of age. Mr. Mackay was born at Virginia City,
Nevada, April 22, 1871. Reporter _San Francisco Chronicle_, 1886.
Worked on newspapers as printer, reporter and editor until 1895, when
he traveled extensively over the world for the International News
Syndicate; joined staff of the _New York World_ in 1899; managing
editor of _Success Magazine_, 1900-1908. Editor the _Delineator_,
1908. Joined editorial department of the Frank A. Munsey Company in
1909, contributor of short stories, also other prose and verse.


                    THE HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN DIED

             Above Judea's purple-mantled plain,
               There hovers still, among the ruins lone,
               The spirit of the Christ whose dying moan
             Was heard in heaven, and paid our debt in pain.

             As subtle perfume lingers with the rose,
               Even when its petals flutter to the earth,
               So clings the potent mystery of the birth
             Of that deep love from which all mercy flows.

                    .       .       .       .       .

             Within this house,--this room,--a martyr died,
               A prophet of a larger liberty,--
               A liberator setting bondmen free,
             A full-orbed MAN, above mere mortal pride.

             The cloud-rifts opening to celestial glades,
               Oft glimpse him, and his spirit lingers still,
               As Christ's sweet influence broods upon the hill
             Where the red lily with the sunset fades.

                    .       .       .       .       .

             A little girl with eyes of heavenly blue,
               Sings through the old place, ignorant of all;
               Her angel face, her cheerful, birdlike call
             Thrilling the heart to life more full, more true.




                        IN TOKEN OF RESPECT

                  _Translation from Latin verses_


               From humble parentage and low degree
                 Lincoln ascended to the highest rank;
               None ever had a harder task than he,
                 It was perfected--him alone we thank.

               Did the assassin think to kill a name,
                 Or hand his own down to posterity?
               One will wear the laurel wreath of fame,
                 The other be condemned to infamy.

               Caesar was killed by Brutus,
                 Yet Rome did not cease to be;
               Lincoln by Booth, and yet the slaves
                 In all America are free!

            Rieti, France, May, 1865




                          ENGLAND'S SORROW

                         _From London Fun_


            The hand of an Assassin, glowing red,
              Shot like a firebrand through the western sky;
            And stalwart Abraham Lincoln now is dead!
              O! felon heart that thus could basely dye
            The name of southerner with murderous gore!
              Could such a spirit come from mortal womb?
            And what possessed it that not heretofore
              It linked its coward mission with the tomb?
            Lincoln! thy fame shall sound through many an age,
              To prove that genius lives in humble birth;
            Thy name shall sound upon historic page,
              For 'midst thy faults we all esteemed thy worth.

            Gone art thou now! no more 'midst angry heat
              Shall thy calm spirit rule the surging tide,
            Which rolls where two contending nations meet,
              To still the passion and to curb the pride.
            Nations have looked and seen the fate of kings,
              Protectors, emperors, and such like men;
            Behold the man whose dirge all Europe sings,
              Now past the eulogy of mortal pen!
            He, like a lighthouse, fell athwart the strand;
              Let curses rest upon the assassin's hand.




               [Illustration: THE FUNERAL OF LINCOLN

   Ceremonies in the East Room of the White House, April 19, 1865]


At ten minutes after twelve o'clock Rev. Charles H. Hall, of the
Church of the Epiphany, opened the service by reading from the
Episcopal Burial Service for the Dead. Bishop Matthew Simpson of the
Methodist Church then offered prayer, and the Rev. Dr. Phineas D.
Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, at which
Mr. Lincoln and his family attended, delivered a sermon. The Rev. E.
H. Gray, D.D., of the E Street Baptist Church, closed the solemn
service with prayer.


Phineas Densmore Gurley, born at Hamilton, New York, 1816. Educated at
Union College, Schenectady, New York. Taught during vacation,
graduated 1837. Studied theology at the Theological Seminary,
Princeton, New Jersey. Was licensed to preach in 1840. In 1840 he went
to Indianapolis, Indiana, and took charge of a church. In 1849 he
removed to Dayton, Ohio, taking charge of a church, and in 1853 moved
to Washington, D. C., and took charge of a Presbyterian Church on F
Street, afterwards Willard Hall. In 1858 was elected Chaplain of the
United States Senate. In July, 1859, the Second Presbyterian Church
and the F Street Church united, and were known as the New York Avenue
Presbyterian Church, Dr. Gurley becoming its pastor from March, 1861,
until his death. President Lincoln was a pew holder and a regular
attendant, but was not a member. On one occasion the President
remarked, "I like Dr. Gurley, he doesn't preach politics. I get enough
of that during the week, and when I go to church I like to hear
gospel."

When the President was assassinated Dr. Gurley was sent for and
remained with the President until he breathed his last.

As soon as the spirit took its flight, Secretary Stanton turned to Dr.
Gurley and said, "Doctor, will you say something?" After a brief
pause, Dr. Gurley said, "Let us talk with God," and offered a touching
prayer. Dr. Gurley died September 30, 1868.


                    THE FUNERAL HYMN OF LINCOLN

                 Rest, noble martyr! rest in peace;
                   Rest with the true and brave,
                 Who, like thee, fell in freedom's cause,
                   The nation's life to save.

                 Thy name shall live while time endures,
                   And men shall say of thee,
                 "He saved his country from its foes,
                   And bade the slave be free."

                 These deeds shall be thy monument,
                   Better than brass or stone;
                 They leave thy fame in glory's light,
                   Unrival'd and alone.

                 This consecrated spot shall be
                   To freedom ever dear;
                 And freedom's sons of every race
                   Shall weep and worship here.

                 O God! before whom we, in tears,
                   Our fallen chief deplore,
                 Grant that the cause for which he died
                   May live forevermore.




Harriet McEwen Kimball, born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November,
1834. Educated there; specially known as a religious poet, although
she has written much secular verse; chief founder of the Portsmouth
Cottage Hospital. Author hymns, _Swallow Flights_; _Blessed Company of
All Faithful People_; _Poems_ (complete edition), 1889.


                         REST, REST FOR HIM

             Rest, rest for him whose noble work is done;
               For him who led us gently, unaware,
               Till we were readier to do and dare
             For Freedom, and her hundred fields were won.

             His march is ended where his march began;
               More sweet his sleep for toil and sacrifice,
               And that rare wisdom whose beginning lies
             In fear of God, and charity for man;

             And sweetest for the tender faith that grew
               More strong in trial, and through doubt more clear,
               Seeing in clouds and darkness One appear
             In whose dread name the Nation's sword he drew.

             Rest, rest for him; and rest for us today
               Whose sorrow shook the land from east to west
               When slain by treason on the Nation's breast
             Her martyr breathed his steadfast soul away.




                  [Illustration: THE FUNERAL CAR]


This car bore the remains of the Martyr President to his home in
Springfield, Illinois, where they were laid to rest. The funeral train
left Washington, D. C., on the 21st of April, 1865, proceeded from
that city to Baltimore, Maryland; Harrisburg and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania; New York City, Albany and Buffalo, New York; Cleveland
and Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; and
finally to Springfield, reaching the latter place May 3, where the
last sad rites were performed on the succeeding day. The body lay in
state in all the above cities, brief stops being also made in many
smaller places.


Richard Henry Stoddard in the following Horatian Ode made a beautiful
analysis of the Martyr President's character, with a magnificent
picture of the nation's tribute of mourning for its dead chief:


                     THE FUNERAL CAR OF LINCOLN

                Peace! Let the long procession come,
                For, hark!--the mournful, muffled drum--
                The trumpet's wail afar--
                And, see! the awful car!

                Peace! let the sad procession go,
                While cannon boom, and bells toll slow:
                And go, thou sacred car,
                Bearing our Woe afar!

                Go, darkly borne, from State to State,
                Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait
                To honor all they can
                The dust of that good man!

                Go, grandly borne, with such a train
                As greatest kings might die to gain;
                The Just, the Wise, the Brave
                Attend thee to the grave!

                And you the soldiers of our wars,
                Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars,
                Salute him once again,
                Your late Commander--slain!

                Yes, let your tears, indignant, fall,
                And leave your muskets on the wall;
                Your country needs you now
                Beside the forge, the plow!

                (When Justice shall unsheathe her brand--
                If Mercy may not stay her hand,
                Nor would we have it so--
                She must direct the blow!)

                So, sweetly, sadly, sternly goes
                The Fallen to his last repose;
                Beneath no mighty dome,
                But in his modest Home!

                The churchyard where his children rest,
                The quiet spot that suits him best;
                There shall his grave be made,
                And there his bones be laid!

                And there his countrymen shall come,
                With memory proud, with pity dumb,
                And strangers far and near,
                For many and many a year!

                For many a year, and many an age,
                With History on her ample page
                The virtues shall enroll
                Of that Paternal Soul.




William Cullen Bryant, born in Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3,
1794. Died in New York, June 12, 1878. He wrote verses in his twelfth
year to be recited at school. Spent two years at Williams College and
at the age of eighteen began the study of law. He depended upon his
profession for a number of years, although it was not to his liking.
His contributions to the _North American Review_ and his poems
published therein gained him an enviable reputation, and reflected
great credit upon him.


                        THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

                Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,
                  Gentle and merciful and just!
                Who, in the fear of God didst bear
                  The sword of power, a nation's trust.

                In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
                  Amid the awe that hushes all,
                And speak the anguish of a land
                  That shook with horror at thy fall.

                Thy task is done; the bond is free--
                  We bear thee to an honored grave,
                Whose noblest monument shall be
                  The broken fetters of the slave.

                Pure was thy life; its bloody close
                  Hath placed thee with the sons of light
                Among the noble host of those
                  Who perished in the cause of right.




             [Illustration: CITY HALL, NEW YORK, N. Y.]


At the time of the appearance of the procession at the City Hall at
least twenty thousand persons were assembled in the immediate
neighborhood. While awaiting the arrival of the procession a number of
German singing bands were marched into the open space before the Hall,
and arranged on either side of the entrance, preparatory to the
singing of a requiem to the dead. The procession entered the Park at
about half-past eleven o'clock, and the hearse stopped before the
entrance to the Hall. Here the coffin was immediately taken from the
hearse and carried up the stairs to the catafalque which had been
prepared for its reception, while the singing societies rendered two
very appropriate dirges.

The interior of the City Hall had been decorated with much taste.
Across the dome a black curtain was drawn, and the rays of light thus
conducted fell subdued upon the sad but imposing spectacle.




Henry T. Tuckerman, a member of the Committee on Resolutions, wrote
the following ode for the funeral obsequies, on the 25th day of April,
1865, at New York City. The Athenaeum Club participated, bearing an
appropriate banner, the members wearing distinctive badges of mourning
and under the leadership of their Vice-President, Henry E. Pierpont;
the President, William T. Blodgett, being at that time absent acting
as Chairman of the Citizens Committee:


                                ODE

                Shroud the banner! rear the cross!
                Consecrate a nation's loss;
                Gaze on that majestic sleep;
                Stand beside the bier to weep;
                Lay the gentle son of toil
                Proudly in his native soil;
                Crowned with honor, to his rest
                Bear the prophet of the West.

                How cold the brow that yet doth wear
                The impress of a nation's care;
                How still the heart, whose every beat
                Glowed with compassion's sacred heat;
                Rigid the lips, whose patient smile
                Duty's stern task would oft beguile;
                Blood-quenched the pensive eye's soft light;
                Nerveless the hand so loth to smite;
                So meek in rule, it leads, though dead,
                The people as in life it led.

                O let his wise and guileless sway
                Win every recreant today,
                And sorrow's vast and holy wave
                Blend all our hearts around his grave!
                Let the faithful bondmen's tears,
                Let the traitor's craven fears,
                And the people's grief and pride,
                Plead against the parricide!
                Let us throng to pledge and pray
                O'er the patriot martyr's clay;
                Then, with solemn faith in right,
                That made him victor in the fight,
                Cling to the path he fearless trod,
                Still radiant with the smile of God.

                Shroud the banner! rear the cross!
                Consecrate a nation's loss;
                Gaze on that majestic sleep;
                Stand beside the bier to weep;
                Lay the gentle son of toil
                Proudly in his native soil;
                Crowned with honor, to his rest
                Bear the prophet of the West.




Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly, Mass., in 1826. At the age of seven
years she wrote stories and poems. She spent three years in school,
then worked in the cotton mills. Some of her writings attracted the
attention of Whittier, from whom she received encouragement. At the
age of twenty she went to Illinois and there taught school for some
time, and for three years studied in Monticello Female Seminary. She
returned to Massachusetts and during the war wrote many patriotic
poems.


                              TOLLING

                    Tolling, tolling, tolling!
                      All the bells of the land!
                    Lo, the patriot martyr
                      Taketh his journey grand!
                    Travels into the ages,
                      Bearing a hope how dear!
                    Into life's unknown vistas,
                      Liberty's great pioneer.

                    Tolling, tolling, tolling!
                      See, they come as a cloud,
                    Hearts of a mighty people,
                      Bearing his pall and shroud;
                    Lifting up, like a banner,
                      Signals of loss and woe;
                    Wonder of breathless nations,
                      Moveth the solemn show.

                    Tolling, tolling, tolling!
                      Was it, O man beloved,
                    Was it thy funeral only
                      Over the land that moved?




        [Illustration: ROTUNDA, CITY HALL, NEW YORK, N. Y.]


The remains of President Lincoln lay in state in the City Hall, New
York, from noon April 24 to noon April 25, 1865. Visitors were
admitted to view the remains, passing through the Hall two abreast.
Singing societies sang dirges in the rotunda the night through.




Richard Storrs Willis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, February 10,
1819, was graduated at Yale in 1841, and adopted literature as his
profession. He has published musical and other poems; has edited the
_New York Musical World_ and _Once a Week_, and contributed also to
current literature. He wrote the following:


                         REQUIEM OF LINCOLN

                Now wake the requiem's solemn moan,
                For him whose patriot task is done!
                A nation's heart stands still today
                With horror, o'er his martyred clay!

                O, God of Peace, repress the ire,
                Which fills our souls with vengeful fire!
                Vengeance is Thine--and sovereign might,
                Alone, can such a crime requite!

                Farewell, thou good and guileless heart!
                The manliest tears for thee must start!
                E'en those at times who blamed thee here,
                Now deeply sorrow o'er thy bier.

                O, Jesus, grant him sweet repose,
                Who, like Thee, seemed to love his foes!
                Those foes, like Thine, their wrath to spend,
                Have slain their best, their firmest friend.




           [Illustration: ST. JAMES HALL, BUFFALO, N. Y.]


The funeral train bearing the remains of President Lincoln reached
Buffalo, New York, on Thursday morning, the 27th of April. The body
was taken from the funeral car and borne by soldiers up to St. James'
Hall, where it was placed under a crape canopy, extending from the
ceiling to the floor. The Buffalo St. Cecilia Society sang with deep
pathos the dirge "Rest, Spirit, Rest," the society then placed an
elegantly formed harp, made of choice white flowers, at the head of
the coffin, as a tribute from them to the honored dead. The public
were admitted to view the remains, and the following day the remains
reached Cleveland, Ohio.




James Nicoll Johnston was born in Ardee, County Donegal, Ireland. When
two years of age the family moved to Cashelmore, Sheephaven Bay,
County Donegal. In 1847 they moved to America. He was then between
fifteen and sixteen years of age. In 1848 they settled at Buffalo,
New York, which has been his home until the present time.

He has published two editions of _Donegal Memories_, also two editions
of _Donegal Memories and Other Poems_, and a volume of Buffalo verse
collected by him under the title of _Poets and Poetry of Buffalo_. He
assisted in collections of Buffalo local literature, also devoted much
time to the production of publications of a philanthropic nature.


                              REQUIEM

                  Bear him to his Western home,
                    Whence he came four years ago;
                  Not beneath some Eastern dome,
                  But where Freedom's airs may come,
                    Where the prairie grasses grow,
                    To the friends who loved him so,

                  Take him to his quiet rest;
                    Toll the bell and fire the gun;
                  He who served his Country best,
                  He whom millions loved and bless'd,
                    Now has fame immortal won;
                    Rack of brain and heart is done.

                  Shed thy tears, O April rain,
                    O'er the tomb wherein he sleeps!
                  Wash away the bloody stain!
                  Drape the skies in grief, O rain!
                    Lo! a nation with thee weeps,
                  Grieving o'er her martyred slain.

                  To the people whence he came,
                    Bear him gently back again,
                  Greater his than victor's fame:
                  His is now a sainted name;
                    Never ruler had such gain--
                    Never people had such pain.




                  [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

                 Photograph taken in 1863 by Brady]




Oliver Wendell Holmes, born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809. To
him belongs the credit of saving the frigate Constitution from
destruction, by a poem--_Aye, Tear the Battered Ensign Down_. He died
August 7, 1894.


               SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                  (_City of Boston, June 1, 1865_)


                O Thou of soul and sense and breath,
                  The ever-present Giver,
                Unto Thy mighty angel, death,
                  All flesh Thou didst deliver;
                What most we cherish, we resign,
                For life and death alike are Thine,
                  Who reignest Lord forever!

                Our hearts lie buried in the dust
                  With him, so true and tender,
                The patriot's stay, the people's trust,
                  The shield of the offender;
                Yet every murmuring voice is still,
                As, bowing to Thy sovereign will,
                  Our best loved we surrender.

                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!

                Be Thou Thy orphaned Israel's friend,
                  Forsake Thy people never,
                In one our broken many blend,
                  That none again may sever!
                Hear us, O Father, while we raise
                With trembling lips our song of praise,
                  And bless Thy name forever!




           [Illustration: LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, MAY 4, 1865

   Photographed by F. W. Ingmire on the day of the funeral, with the
   members of the National Committee appointed to accompany the
   remains to Springfield, Illinois.

   Members on the pavement: Left (1) Hon. Schuyler Colfax, Speaker
   of the House; (2) Hon. R. C. Schenck, Ohio; (3) Hon. Lyman
   Trumbull, Illinois; (4) Hon. Charles E. Phelps, Maryland; (5)
   Hon. W. H. Wallace, Idaho; (6) Hon. Joseph Baily, Pennsylvania;
   (7) Hon. James K. Morehead, Pennsylvania; (8) Hon. Sidney Clarke,
   Kansas; (9) Hon. Samuel Hooper, Massachusetts; (10) Hon. E. B.
   Washburn, Illinois; (11) Hon. Thomas W. Ferry, Michigan; (12)
   Hon. Thomas B. Shannon, California; (13) S. G. Ordway,
   Sergeant-at-Arms of the House.

   Members in the yard: Left (1) Hon. Isaac N. Arnold, Illinois; (2)
   Hon. John B. Henderson, Missouri; (3) Hen. Richard Yates,
   Illinois; (4) Hon. James W. Nye, Nevada; (5) Hon. Henry S. Lane,
   Indiana; (6) Hon. George H. Williams, Oregon; (7) Hon. George T.
   Brown, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate; (8) Hon. William A.
   Newell, New Jersey.]




William Allen, D.D., born 1784, died 1868. Graduated at Harvard, 1802.
President Dartmouth College, 1816-1819, Bowdoin College, 1820-1839. He
was the father of American Biography, published various volumes of
poems; as a philologist, he contributed many thousands of words and
definitions to Webster and Worcester's dictionaries. He was leader of
the American delegation to the National Peace Congress at Versailles
in 1849.


                  SPRINGFIELD'S WELCOME TO LINCOLN

                Lincoln! thy country's father, hail!
                We bid thee welcome, but bewail;
                Welcome unto thy chosen home--
                Triumphant, glorious, dost thou come.

                Before the enemy struck the blow
                That laid thee in a moment low,
                God gave thy wish: It was to see
                Our Union safe, our country free.

                A country where the gospel truth
                Shall reach the hearts of age and youth,
                And move unchained, in majesty,
                A model land of liberty!

                When Jacob's bones, from Egypt borne,
                Regained their home, the people mourn;
                Great mourning then at Ephron's cave,
                Both Abraham's and Isaac's grave.

                Far greater is the mourning now;
                For our land one emblem wide of woe;
                And where thy coffin car appears
                Do not the people throng in tears?

                Thy triumph of a thousand miles,
                Like eastern conqueror with his spoils--
                A million hearts thy captives led,
                All weeping for their chieftain dead.

                Thy chariot, moved with eagle speed
                Without the aid of prancing steed,
                Has brought thee to that destined tomb;
                Springfield, thy home, will give thee room.

                Lincoln, the martyr, welcome home!
                What lessons blossom on thy tomb!
                In God's pure truth and law delight;
                With firm, unwavering soul do right.

                Be condescending, kind and just;
                In God's wise counsels put thy trust;
                Let no proud soul e'er dare rebel,
                Moved by vile passions sprung from hell.

                Come, sleep with us in sweet repose,
                Till we, as Christ from death arose,
                Still in His glorious image rise
                To dwell with him beyond the skies.




           [Illustration: STATE CAPITOL, ILLINOIS, 1865]


The body of the President lay in state in the Capitol, Springfield,
Illinois--which was very richly draped--from May 3 to May 4, when it
was removed to Oak Ridge Cemetery.




Lucy Hamilton Hooper, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 20,
1835. In conjunction with Charles G. Leland she edited _Our Daily
Fare_, the daily chronicle of the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair in 1864.
She was assistant editor of _Lippincott's Magazine_ from its
foundation until she went to Europe in 1870. In 1874 she settled in
Paris and since has been correspondent for various journals in this
country. She has published _Poems, with Translations from the German_
(Philadelphia, 1864), another volume of _Poems_ (1871); a translation
of _Le Nabob_, by Alphonse Daudet (Boston, 1879); and _Under the
Tricolor_, a novel (Philadelphia, 1880). She died August 31, 1893.


                              LINCOLN

             There is a shadow on the sunny air,
               There is a darkness o'er the April day,
             We bow our heads beneath this awful cloud
               So sudden come, and not to pass away.

             O the wild grief that sweeps across our land
               From frozen Maine to Californian shore!
             A people's tears, an orphaned nation's wail,
               For him the good, the great, who is no more.

             The noblest brain that ever toiled for man,
               The kindest heart that ever thrilled a breast,
             The lofty soul unstained by soil of earth,
               Sent by a traitor to a martyr's rest.

             And his last act (O gentle, kindly heart!)
               The noble prompting of unselfish grace.
             He would not disappoint the waiting crowd
               Who came to gaze upon his honored face.

             O God, thy ways are just, and yet we find
               This dispensation hard to understand.
             Why must our Prophet's weary feet be stay'd
               Upon the borders of the Promised Land?

             He bore the heat, the burden of the day,
               The golden eventide he shall not see;
             He shall not see the old flag wave again
               Over a land united, saved, and free.

             He loved his people, and he ever lent
               To all our griefs a sympathizing ear;
             Now for the first time in these four sad years
               The stricken nation wails--he does not hear.

             O never wept a land a nobler Chief!
               Kind heart, strong hand, true soul--yet, while we weep
             Let us remember, e'en amid our tears,
               'Tis God who gives to his beloved sleep.

             So sleeps he now, the chosen man of God,
               No more shall care or sorrow wring his breast;
             The weary one and heavy laden, lies
               Hushed by the voice of God to endless rest.

             We need no solemn knell, no tolling bells,
               No chanted dirge, no vain words sadly said.
             The saddest knell that ever stirred the air
               Rang in those words, "Our President is dead!"




  [Illustration: PUBLIC VAULT, OAK RIDGE CEMETERY, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.,

                  On the day of Lincoln's funeral]


The remains of President Lincoln were deposited in this receiving
vault of Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois, on the 4th of May,
1865, where they remained until December 21, 1865, when they were
removed to a temporary vault near the site of the public one. On
September 19, 1871, the remains were removed to the monument which had
been erected and which stands on the top of the hill in that cemetery
back of the public vault. The remains of Mrs. Lincoln, Willie and
Thomas (Tad), are also resting there.




                      LET THE PRESIDENT SLEEP

                       _By James M. Stewart_


      Let the President sleep! all his duty is done,
      He has lived for our glory, the triumph is won;
      At the close of the fight, like a warrior brave,
      He retires from the field to the rest of the grave.
      Hush the roll of the drum, hush the cannon's loud roar,
      He will guide us to peace through the battle no more;
      But new freedom shall dawn from the place of his rest,
      Where the star has gone down in the beautiful West.
      Tread lightly, breathe softly, and gratefully bring
      To the sod that enfolds him the first flowers of spring;
      They will tenderly treasure the tears that we weep
      O'er the grave of our chief--let the President sleep.

      Let the President sleep--tears will hallow the ground,
      Where we raise o'er his ashes the sheltering mound,
      And his spirit will sometimes return from above,
      There to mingle with ours in ineffable love.
      Peace to thee, noble dead, thou hast battled for right,
      And hast won high reward from the Father of Light;
      Peace to thee, martyr-hero, and sweet be thy rest,
      Where the sunlight fades out in the beautiful West.
      Tread lightly, breathe softly, and gratefully bring
      To the sod that enfolds him the first flowers of spring;
      They will tenderly treasure the tears that we weep
      O'er the grave of our chief--let the President sleep!




               [Illustration: FACADE OF PUBLIC VAULT

    Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois, in which the body
                of Lincoln was placed, May 4, 1865]




James Mackay, born in New York, April 8, 1872. Author of _The Economy
of Happiness_, _The Politics of Utility_, and of various lectures on
Scientific Ethics, etc.


                      THE CENOTAPH OF LINCOLN

          And so they buried Lincoln? Strange and vain
          Has any creature thought of Lincoln hid
          In any vault 'neath any coffin lid,
          In all the years since that wild spring of pain?
          'Tis false--he never in the grave hath lain.
          You could not bury him although you slid
          Upon his clay the Cheops Pyramid,
          Or heaped it with the Rocky Mountain chain.
          They slew themselves;--they but set Lincoln free.
          In all the earth his great heart beats as strong,
          Shall beat while pulses throb to chivalry,
          And burn with hate of tyranny and wrong.
          Whoever will may find him, anywhere
          Save in the tomb. Not there--he is not there.




                  [Illustration: LINCOLN MONUMENT

         Springfield, Illinois, Larken G. Mead, Architect]


A movement was started shortly after the burial of Lincoln to raise
funds sufficient to build a monument over his grave. Contributions
were made by various States and societies, and about sixty thousand
Sunday-school scholars contributed the sum of eighteen thousand
dollars. Ground was broken on the 9th of September, 1869, and the
monument was dedicated on the 15th of October, 1874, at a total cost
of two hundred and thirty thousand dollars.




James Judson Lord, born at Berwick, Maine, in 1821. He had the
advantage of an excellent early education followed by years of
research. During his preparatory studies at Cambridge he met
Longfellow, who loaned him books from his own library. For a time he
studied art under prominent masters, but his health failing, after a
time of forced leisure he went into the mercantile business in Boston,
which vocation he afterward followed. In 1851 he went to Illinois;
finally, after his marriage, settling in Springfield. There he knew
Mr. Lincoln, with whom he was on terms of closest friendship.

The poem submitted by Mr. Lord was selected for reading at the
dedication of the National Lincoln Monument in a competition which
brought contributions from many leading poets.

He was the author of several dramas, and from time to time contributed
poems to leading magazines and newspapers of the country. He died
January 3, 1905.


                          DEDICATION POEM

        _Read by Richard Edwards, LL.D., President Illinois
         State Normal University at Bloomington, Illinois_

             We build not here a temple or a shrine,
             Nor hero-fane to demigods divine;
             Nor to the clouds a superstructure rear
             For man's ambition or for servile fear.
             Not to the Dust, but to the Deeds alone
             A grateful people raise th' historic stone;
             For where a patriot lived, or hero fell,
             The daisied turf would mark the spot as well.

             What though the Pyramids, with apex high,
             Like Alpine peaks cleave Egypt's rainless sky,
             And cast grim shadows o'er a desert land
             Forever blighted by oppression's hand?
             No patriot zeal their deep foundations laid--
             No freeman's hand their darken'd chambers made--
             No public weal inspired the heart with love,
             To see their summits towering high above.
             The ruling Pharaoh, proud and gory-stained,
             With vain ambitions never yet attained;--
             With brow enclouded as his marble throne,
             And heart unyielding as the building stone;--
             Sought with the scourge to make mankind his slaves,
             And heaven's free sunlight darker than their graves.
             His but to will, and theirs to yield and feel,
             Like vermin'd dust beneath his iron heel;--
             Denies all mercy, and all right offends,
             Till on his head th' avenging Plague descends.

             Historic justice bids the nations know
             That through each land of slaves a Nile of blood
                 shall flow:
             And Vendome Columns, on a people thrust,
             Are, by the people, level'd with the dust.

             Nor stone, nor bronze, can fit memorials yield
             For deeds of valor on the bloody field,
             'Neath war's dark clouds the sturdy volunteer,
             By freedom taught his country to revere,
             Bids home and friends a hasty, sad adieu,
             And treads where dangers all his steps pursue;
             Finds cold and famine on his dauntless way,
             And with mute patience brooks the long delay,
             Or hears the trumpet, or the thrilling drum
             Peal the long roll that calls: "They come! they come!"
             Then to the front with battling hosts he flies,
             And lives to triumph, or for freedom dies.
             Thund'ring amain along the rocky strand,
             The Ocean claims her honors with the Land.
             Loud on the gale she chimes the wild refrain,
             Or with low murmur wails her heroes slain!
             In gory hulks, with splinter'd mast and spar,
             Rocks on her stormy breast the valiant Tar:--
             Lash'd to the mast he gives the high command,
             Or midst the fight, sinks with the _Cumberland_.

             Beloved banner of the azure sky,
             Thy rightful home where'er thy eagles fly;
             On thy blue field the stars of heav'n descend,
             And to our day a purer luster lend.
             O, Righteous God! who guard'st the right alway,
             And bade Thy peace to come, "and come to stay":
             And while war's deluge fill'd the land with blood,
             With bow of promise arch'd the crimson flood,--
             From fratricidal strife our banner screen,
             And let it float henceforth in skies serene.

             Yet cunning art shall here her triumphs bring,
             And laurel'd bards their choicest anthems sing.
             Here, honor'd age shall bare its wintery brow,
             And youth to freedom make a Spartan vow.
             Here, ripened manhood from its walks profound,
             Shall come and halt, as if on hallow'd ground.

             Here shall the urn with fragrant wreaths be drest,
             By tender hands the flow'ry tributes prest;
             And wending westward, from oppressions far,
             Shall pilgrims come, led by our freedom-star;
             While bending lowly, as o'er friendly pall,
             The silent tear from ebon cheeks shall fall.

             Sterile and vain the tributes which we pay--
             It is the Past that consecrates today
             The spot where rests one of the noble few
             Who saw the right, and dared the right to do.
             True to himself and to his fellow men,
             With patient hand he moved the potent pen,
             Whose inky stream did, like the Red Sea's flow,
             Such bondage break and such a host o'erthrow!
             The simple parchment on its fleeting page
             Bespeaks the import of the better age,--
             When man, for man, no more shall forge the chain,
             Nor armies tread the shore, nor navies plow the main.
             Then shall this boon to human freedom given
             Be fitly deem'd a sacred gift of heaven;--
             Though of the earth, it is no less divine,--
             Founded on truth it will forever shine,
             Reflecting rays from heaven's unchanging plan--
             The law of right and brotherhood of man.




Edna Dean Proctor, born in Henniker, New Hampshire, October 10, 1838.
She received her early education in Concord and subsequently removed
to Brooklyn, New York. She contributed largely to magazine literature
and has traveled extensively abroad. Of all her poems _By the
Shenandoah_ is probably the most popular.


                     THE GRAVE OF LINCOLN

                 Now must the storied Potomac
                   Laurels forever divide;
                 Now to the Sangamon fameless
                   Give of its century's pride.
                 Sangamon, stream of the prairies,
                   Placidly westward that flows,
                 Far in whose city of silence
                   Calm he has sought his repose.
                 Over our Washington's river
                   Sunrise beams rosy and fair;
                 Sunset on Sangamon fairer,--
                   Father and martyr lies there.

                 Break into blossom, O prairie!
                   Snowy and golden and red;
                 Peers of the Palestine lilies
                   Heap for your Glorious Dead!
                 Roses as fair as of Sharon,
                   Branches as stately as palm,
                 Odors as rich as the spices--
                   Cassia and aloes and balm--
                 Mary the loved and Salome,
                   All with a gracious accord,
                 Ere the first glow of the morning
                   Brought to the tomb of the Lord.

                 Not for thy sheaves nor savannas
                   Crown we thee, proud Illinois!
                 Here in his grave is thy grandeur;
                   Born of his sorrow thy joy.
                 Only the tomb by Mount Zion,
                   Hewn for the Lord, do we hold
                 Dearer than his in thy prairies,
                   Girdled with harvests of gold!
                 Still for the world through the ages
                   Wreathing with glory his brow,
                 He shall be Liberty's Saviour;
                   Freedom's Jerusalem thou!




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

     In Lincoln Park, Washington, D. C. Thomas Ball, sculptor.]


The first contribution of five dollars for the statue in Lincoln Park,
Washington, D. C., was made by a colored woman named Charlotte Scott,
of Marietta, Ohio, the morning after the assassination of President
Lincoln, and the entire cost of said monument, amounting to $17,000,
was paid by subscriptions of colored people. It was unveiled April 14,
1876.




James Russell Lowell, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22,
1819. He received his degree in 1838, at Harvard, and his first
production was a class poem which was delivered on that date. He was
successor of Professor Longfellow in the chair of Modern Languages at
Harvard College. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes to the
Spanish Mission, from which he was transferred in 1880 to the Court of
St. James. A long list of poetical works have been published to his
credit. He died August 12, 1891.


                         COMMEMORATION ODE

             Life may be given in many ways,
             And loyalty to Truth be sealed
               As bravely in the closet as the field,
             So bountiful is Fate;
               But then to stand beside her,
               When craven churls deride her,
             To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
               This shows, methinks, God's plan
               And measures of a stalwart man,
             Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
               Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth;
               Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
             Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

             Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,
               Whom late the Nation he had led,
               With ashes on her head,
             Wept with the passion of an angry grief;
             Forgive me, if from present things I turn
             To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
             And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
               Nature, they say, doth dote,
               And cannot make a man
               Save on some worn-out plan,
               Repeating us by rote:
             For him her Old World molds aside she threw,
               And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
               Of the unexhausted West,

             With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
             Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
                 How beautiful to see
             Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
             Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
             One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
               Not lured by any cheat of birth,
               But by his clear-grained human worth,
             And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
               They knew that outward grace is dust;
               They could not choose but trust
             In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
                 And supple-tempered will
             That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust!

             His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
               Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
             A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
             Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
             Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
               Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
                 Nothing of Europe here,
             Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
                 Ere any names of Serf or Peer
               Could Nature's equal scheme deface;
               Here was a type of the true elder race,
             And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

             I praise him not; it were too late;
               And some innative weakness there must be
               In him who condescends to victory
             Such as the present gives, and cannot wait,
             Safe in himself as in a fate.
                 So always firmly he;
             He knew to bide his time,
                 And can his fame abide,
             Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
                 Till the wise years decide.
             Great captains, with their guns and drums,
                 Disturb our judgment for the hour,
             But at last silence comes;
                 These are all gone, and, standing like a tower,
             Our children shall behold his fame,
                 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
             Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
                 New birth of our new soil, the first American.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

                        By Leonard W. Volk]




Richard Henry Stoddard, born in Hingham, Massachusetts, July 2, 1825.
His first book, entitled _Foot Prints_, was published in 1849, and
some three years after a more mature collection of poems was
published. In later years a number of his books were published, all of
which have been received with approbation by the public. Died May 12,
1903.


                          AN HORATIAN ODE

                           (_To Lincoln_)

                Not as when some great captain falls
                In battle, where his country calls,
                    Beyond the struggling lines
                    That push his dread designs

                To doom, by some stray ball struck dead:
                Or in the last charge, at the head
                    Of his determined men,
                    Who must be victors then!

                Nor as when sink the civic great,
                The safer pillars of the State,
                    Whose calm, mature, wise words
                    Suppress the need of swords!

                With no such tears as e'er were shed
                Above the noblest of our dead
                    Do we today deplore
                    The man that is no more.

                Our sorrow hath a wider scope,
                Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,--
                    A wonder, blind and dumb,
                    That waits--what is to come!

                Not more astonished had we been
                If madness, that dark night, unseen,
                    Had in our chambers crept,
                    And murdered while we slept!

                We woke to find a mourning earth--
                Our Lares shivered on the hearth,--
                    To roof-tree fallen--all
                    That could affright, appall!

                Such thunderbolts, in other lands,
                Have smitten the rod from royal hands,
                    But spared, with us, till now,
                    Each laureled Caesar's brow.

                No Caesar he, whom we lament,
                A man without a precedent,
                    Sent it would seem, to do
                    His work--and perish too!

                Not by the weary cares of state,
                The endless tasks, which will not wait,
                    Which, often done in vain,
                    Must yet be done again;

                Not in the dark, wild tide of war,
                Which rose so high, and rolled so far,
                    Sweeping from sea to sea
                    In awful anarchy;--

                Four fateful years of mortal strife,
                Which slowly drained the Nation's life,
                    (Yet, for each drop that ran
                    There sprang an armed man!)

                Not then;--but when by measures meet--
                By victory, and by defeat,
                    By courage, patience, skill,
                    The people's fixed "We will!"

                Had pierced, had crushed rebellion dead--
                Without a hand, without a head:--
                    At last, when all was well,
                    He fell--O, how he fell!

                Tyrants have fallen by such as thou,
                And good hath followed,--may it now!
                    (God lets bad instruments
                    Produce the best events.)

                But he, the man we mourn today,
                No tyrant was; so mild a sway
                    In one such weight who bore
                    Was never known before!

             _From "Poems of Richard Henry Stoddard"_
           Copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons.




        [Illustration: "THE GOOD GRAY POET" (Walt Whitman)]


Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, May 31, 1819.
He was educated in the public schools of Brooklyn and New York City.
Learned the printing trade at which he worked during the summer and
taught school in winter. He made long pedestrian tours through the
United States and even extended his tramps through Canada. His chief
work, _Leaves of Grass_, is a series of poems through which he earned
the praise of some and the abuse of others. He visited the army when a
brother was wounded and remained afterward as a volunteer nurse. Died
1892.


                       O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

  O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
  The ship has weather'd every wrack, the prize we sought is won;
  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel firm and daring;

                   But O heart! heart! heart!
                     O the bleeding drops of red,
                   Where on the deck my Captain lies,
                     Fallen, cold and dead.

  O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
  Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills;
  For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores
       a-crowding;
  For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

                   Here, Captain! dear Father!
                     This arm beneath your head;
                   It is some dream that on the deck
                     You've fallen cold and dead.

  My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
  My Father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
  The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
  From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

                   Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
                     But I, with mournful tread,
                   Walk the deck where my Captain lies,
                     Fallen, cold and dead.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

  By Lott Flannery, in front of the Court House, Washington Unveiled
                          April 16, 1868]




Henry de Garrs, of Sheffield, England, wrote these lines on the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. They were published in
England in 1889, and later in America, in the _Century_.


                  ON THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN

            What dreadful rumor, hurtling o'er the sea,
            Too monstrous for belief, assails our shore?
            Men pause and question, Can such foul crime be?
            Till lingering doubt may cling to hope no more.
            Not when great Caesar weltered in his gore,
            Nor since, in time, or circumstance, or place,
            Hath crime so shook the World's great heart before.
            O World! O World! of all thy records base,
            Time wears no fouler scar on his time-smitten face.

            A king of men, inured to hardy toil,
            Rose truly royal up the steeps of life,
            Till Europe's monarchs seemed to dwarf the while
            Beneath his greatness--great when traitors rife
            Pierced deep his country's heart with treason-knife;
            But greatest when victorious he stood,
            Crowning with mercy freedom's greatest strife.
            The world saw the new light of godlike good
            Ere the assassin's hand shed his most precious blood.

            Lament thy loss, sad sister of the West:
            Not one, but many nations with thee weep;
            Cherish thy martyr on thy wounded breast,
            And lay him with thy Washington to sleep.
            Earth holds no fitter sepulcher to keep
            His royal heart--one of thy kings to be
            Who reign even from the grave; whose scepters sweep
            More potent over human destiny
            Than all ambition's pride and power and majesty.

            Yet, yet rejoice that thou hadst such a son;
            The mother of such a man should never sigh;
            Could longer life a nobler cause have won?
            Could longest age more gloriously die?
            Oh! lift thy heart, thy mind, thy soul on high
            With deep maternal pride, that from thy womb
            Came such a son to scourge hell's foulest lie
            Out of life's temple. Watchers by his tomb!
            He is not there, but risen: that grave is
                 slavery's doom.




         POETICAL TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                        _By Emily J. Bugbee_


        There's a burden of grief on the breezes of Spring,
        And a song of regret from the bird on its wing;
        There's a pall on the sunshine and over the flowers,
        And a shadow of graves on these spirits of ours;
        For a star hath gone out from the night of our sky,
        On whose brightness we gazed as the war-cloud roll'd by;
        So tranquil, and steady, and clear were its beams,
        That they fell like a vision of peace on our dreams.

        A heart that we knew had been true to our weal,
        And a hand that was steadily guiding the wheel;
        A name never tarnished by falsehood or wrong,
        That had dwelt in our hearts like a soul-stirring song.
        Ah! that pure, noble spirit has gone to its rest,
        And the true hand lies nerveless and cold on his breast;
        But the name and the memory--_these_ never will die,
        But grow brighter and dearer as ages go by.

        Yet the tears of a Nation fall over the dead,
        Such tears as a Nation before never shed;
        For our cherished one fell by a dastardly hand,
        A martyr to truth and the cause of the land;
        And a sorrow has surged, like the waves to the shore,
        When the breath of the tempest is sweeping them o'er,
        And the heads of the lofty and lowly have bowed,
        As the shaft of the lightning sped out from the cloud.

        Not gathered, like Washington, home to his rest,
        When the sun of his life was far down in the West;
        But stricken from earth in the midst of his years,
        With the Canaan in view, of his prayers and his tears.
        And the people, whose hearts in the wilderness failed,
        Sometimes, when the star of their promise had paled,
        Now, stand by his side on the mount of his fame,
        And yield him their hearts in a grateful acclaim.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

           Muskegon, Michigan, Charles Niehaus, sculptor]




John Nichol, born at Montrose, Forfarshire, Scotland, September 8,
1833. He was a professor of English Literature at the University of
Glasgow (1861-1889), and did much to make American books popular in
England. His numerous publications include: _Leaves_ (1854), verse;
_Tables of European History, 200-1876 A.D._ (1876); fourth edition
(1888); _Byron in English Men of Letters series_; _American
Literature, 1520-1880_ (1882). He was an ardent advocate of the
Northern cause during the Civil War, and visited the United States at
the close of the conflict. He died at London, England, October 11,
1894.


                           LINCOLN, 1865

            An end at last! The echoes of the war--
              The weary war beyond the Western waves--
            Die in the distance. Freedom's rising star
              Beacons above a hundred thousand graves;

            The graves of heroes who have won the fight,
              Who in the storming of the stubborn town
            Have rung the marriage peal of might and right,
              And scaled the cliffs and cast the dragon down.

            Pæans of armies thrill across the sea,
              Till Europe answers--"Let the struggle cease.
            The bloody page is turned; the next may be
              For ways of pleasantness and paths of peace!"

            A golden morn--a dawn of better things--
              The olive-branch--clasping of hands again--
            A noble lesson read to conquered kings--
              A sky that tempests had not scoured in vain.

            This from America we hoped and him
              Who ruled her "in the spirit of his creed."
            Does the hope last when all our eyes are dim,
              As history records her darkest deed?

            The pilot of his people through the strife,
              With his strong purpose turning scorn to praise,
            E'en at the close of battle reft of life
              And fair inheritance of quiet days.

            Defeat and triumph found him calm and just,
              He showed how clemency should temper power,
            And, dying, left to future times in trust
              The memory of his brief victorious hour.

            O'ermastered by the irony of fate,
              The last and greatest martyr of his cause;
            Slain like Achilles at the Scæan gate,
              He saw the end, and fixed "the purer laws."

            May these endure and, as his work, attest
              The glory of his honest heart and hand--
            The simplest, and the bravest, and the best--
              The Moses and the Cromwell of his land.

            Too late the pioneers of modern spite,
              Awe-stricken by the universal gloom,
            See his name lustrous in Death's sable night,
              And offer tardy tribute at his tomb.

            But we who have been with him all the while,
              Who knew his worth, and loved him long ago,
            Rejoice that in the circuit of our isle
              There is at last no room for Lincoln's foe.




                 [Illustration: LINCOLN AND CABINET

       "The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation."
                   Painted by Frank B. Carpenter.

    From left to right--Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War; Salmon
    P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; President Lincoln; Gideon
    Welles, Secretary of the Navy; William H. Seward, Secretary of
    State; J. P. Usher, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair,
    Postmaster-General; Edward Bates, Attorney-General]




Christopher Pearse Cranch, born in Alexandria, Virginia, March 8,
1813. Graduated at the school of Divinity, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
in 1835, but retired from the ministry in 1842 to devote himself to
art. He studied in Italy in 1846-8, and lived and painted in 1853-63,
and, returning to New York, was elected a member of the National
Academy in 1864. He was a graceful writer of both prose and verse.


                              LINCOLN

       But yesterday--the exulting nation's shout
         Swelled on the breeze of victory through our streets,
       But yesterday--our banners flaunted out
         Like flowers the south wind woos from their retreats;
       Flowers of the nation, blue, and white, and red,
         Waving from balcony, and spire, and mast;
       Which told us that war's wintry storm had fled,
         And spring was more than spring to us at last.

       Today the nation's heart lies crushed and weak;
         Drooping and draped in black our banners stand.
       Too stunned to cry revenge, we scarce may speak
         The grief that chokes all utterance through the land.
       God is in all. With tears our eyes are dim,
         Yet strive through darkness to look to Him!

       No, not in vain he died--not all in vain,
         Our good, great President! This people's hands
       Are linked together in one mighty chain
         Drawn tighter still in triple-woven bands
       To crush the fiends in human masks, whose might
         We suffer, oh, too long! No league, nor truce
       Save men with men! The devils we must fight
         With fire! God wills it in this deed. This use
       We draw from the most impious murder done
         Since Calvary. Rise then, O Countrymen!
       Scatter these marsh-lights hopes of Union won
         Through pardoning clemency. Strike, strike again!
       Draw closer round the foe a girdling flame.
         We are stabbed whene'er we spare--strike in God's name!




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

    Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Randolph Rogers,
               sculptor. Unveiled November 26, 1869]




George Henry Boker, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 6th day
of October, 1823. Graduated at Princeton in 1842, and afterward
studied law. In the year 1847, after his return from an extended tour
in Europe, he published _The Lessons of Life and Other Poems_. He also
produced a number of plays which were successfully produced upon the
stage, both in England and America. During the War of the Rebellion he
wrote a number of patriotic lyrics, collected and published in a
volume under the title of _Poems of the War_. He has also written
other poems and articles in prose which have received high praise.

In the year 1871 he was appointed by President Grant as our United
States Minister to Turkey, but in 1875 was transferred to the more
important Mission of Russia.


                              LINCOLN

             Crown we our heroes with a holier wreath
             Than man e'er wore upon this side of death;
             Mix with their laurels deathless asphodels,
             And chime their pæans from the sacred bells!
             Nor in your praises forget the martyred Chief,
             Fallen for the gospel of your own belief,
             Who, ere he mounted to the people's throne,
             Asked for your prayers, and joined in them his own.
             I knew the man. I see him, as he stands
             With gifts of mercy in his outstretched hands;
             A kindly light within his gentle eyes,
             Sad as the toil in which his heart grew wise;
             His lips half parted with the constant smile
             That kindled truth, but foiled the deepest guile;
             His head bent forward, and his willing ear
             Divinely patient right and wrong to hear:
             Great in his goodness, humble in his state,
             Firm in his purpose, yet not passionate,
             He led his people with a tender hand,
             And won by love a sway beyond command.
             Summoned by lot to mitigate a time
             Frenzied with rage, unscrupulous with crime,
             He bore his mission with so meek a heart
             That Heaven itself took up his people's part;
             And when he faltered, helped him ere he fell,
             Eking his efforts out by miracle.
             No king this man, by grace of God's intent;
             No, something better, freeman,--President!
             A nature modeled on a higher plan,
             Lord of himself, an inborn gentleman!




                   [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

                       Photo by Brady, 1864]




Phoebe Cary was born near Cincinnati, Ohio, September 24, 1824. Her
advantages for education were somewhat better than those of her sister
Alice, whose almost inseparable companion she became at an early age.
They were quite different, however, in temperament, in person and in
mental constitution. Phoebe began to write verse at the age of
seventeen years, and one of her earliest poems, _Nearer Home_,
beginning with "One sweetly solemn thought," won her a world-wide
reputation. In the joint housekeeping in New York she took from choice
(Alice being for many years an invalid) the larger share of duties
upon herself, and hence found little opportunity for literary work.
In society, however, she was brilliant, but at all times kindly. She
wrote a touching tribute to her sister's memory, published in the
_Ladies' Repository_ a few days before her own death, which occurred
at Newport, R. I., July 31, 1871. In the volume of _Poems of Alice and
Phoebe Cary_ (Philadelphia, 1850) but about one-third were written by
Phoebe. Her independently published books are _Poems and Parodies_
(1854), and _Poems of Faith, Hope and Love_ (1868).


                          ABRAHAM LINCOLN

              Our sun hath gone down at the noonday,
                The heavens are black;
              And over the morning the shadows
                Of night-time are back.

              Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon,
                Hush the mirth and the shout;
              God is God! and the ways of Jehovah
                Are past finding out.

              Lo! the beautiful feet on the mountains,
                That yesterday stood;
              The white feet that came with glad tidings
                Are dabbled in blood.

              The Nation that firmly was settling
                The crown on her head,
              Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes,
                And watches her dead.

              Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing
                Is lying so low?
              O, my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish,
                Do you feel, do you know?

              Once this good man we mourn, overwearied,
                Worn, anxious, oppressed,
              Was going out from his audience chamber
                For a season to rest;

              Unheeding the thousands who waited
                To honor and greet,
              When the cry of a child smote upon him
                And turned back his feet.

              "Three days hath a woman been waiting,"
                Said they, "patient and meek."
              And he answered, "Whatever her errand,
                Let me hear; let her speak!"

              So she came, and stood trembling before him
                And pleaded her cause;
              Told him all; how her child's erring father
                Had broken the laws.

              Humbly spake she: "I mourn for his folly,
                His weakness, his fall";
              Proudly spake she: "he is not a TRAITOR,
                And I love him through all!"

              Then the great man, whose heart had been shaken
                By a little babe's cry;
              Answered soft, taking counsel of mercy,
                "This man shall not die!"

              Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields,
                The dark holds of ships;
              Every faint, feeble cry which oppression
                Smothered down on men's lips.

              In her furnace, the centuries had welded
                Their fetter and chain;
              And like withes, in the hands of his purpose,
                He snapped them in twain.

              Who can be what he was to the people;
                What he was to the State?
              Shall the ages bring to us another
                As good and as great?

              Our hearts with their anguish are broken,
                Our wet eyes are dim;
              For us is the loss and the sorrow,
                The triumph for him!

              For, ere this, face to face with his Father
                Our Martyr hath stood;
              Giving into his hand the white record
                With its great seal of blood!

              That the hand which reached out of the darkness
                Hath taken the whole?
              Yea, the arm and the head of the people--
                The heart and the soul!

              And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence
                A nation has wept;
              Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest
                A man ever kept!




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

   By Augustus Saint Gaudens, in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois]


On the 22nd of October, 1887, this statue by Saint Gaudens was
unveiled, Mr. Eli Bates donating $40,000 for that purpose. There is a
vast oval of cut stone, thirty by sixty feet, the interior fashioned
to form a classic bench, and the statue stands on a stone pedestal.
The sculptor represents him as an orator, just risen from his chair,
which is shown behind him, and waiting for the audience to become
quiet before beginning his speech. The attitude is that always assumed
by Lincoln at the beginning--one hand behind him, and the other
grasping the lapel of his coat. He appears the very incarnation of
rugged grandeur which held the master mind of this age.




Charles Graham Halpin (Miles O'Reilly) was born near Oldcastle, County
of Meath, Ireland, November 20, 1829. Graduated from Trinity College,
Dublin, in 1846. He entered the field of journalism as a profession
and soon gained a reputation in England. Came to New York in 1852 and
secured employment with the _Herald_, was later connected with other
papers. Enlisted in April, 1861, and became lieutenant of Colonel
Corcoran's 69th Regiment, rising to the rank of brigadier-general. He
died in New York City, August 3, 1868.


                              LINCOLN

               He filled the Nation's eyes and heart,
                 An honored, loved, familiar name;
                 So much a brother that his fame
               Seemed of our lives a common part.

               His towering figure, sharp and spare,
                 Was with such nervous tension strung,
                 As if on each strained sinew swung
               The burden of a people's care.

               His changing face, what pen can draw--
                 Pathetic, kindly, droll or stern;
                 And with a glance so quick to learn
               The inmost truth of all he saw.

               Pride found no place to spawn
                 Her fancies in his busy mind.
                 His worth, like health or air, could find
               No just appraisal till withdrawn.

               He was his country's--not his own;
                 He had no wish but for the weak,
                 Nor for himself could think or feel,
               But as a laborer for her throne.

               Her flag upon the heights of power--
                 Stainless and unassayed to place,
                 To this one end his earnest face
               Was bent through every burdened hour.

                 .       .       .       .       .

               But done the battle--won the strife;
                 When torches light his vaulted tomb,
                 Broad gems flash out and crowns illume
               The clay-cold brow undecked in life.

                 .       .       .       .       .

               O, loved and lost! Thy patient toil
                 Had robed our cause in victory's light;
                 Our country stood redeemed and bright,
               With not a slave on all her soil.

               'Mid peals of bells and cannon's bark,
                 And shouting streets with flags abloom,
                 Sped the shrill arrow of thy doom,
               And, in an instant, all was dark!

                 .       .       .       .       .

               A martyr to the cause of man,
                 His blood is Freedom's Eucharist,
                 And in the world's great hero list
               His name shall lead the van.

               Yes! ranked on Faith's white wings unfurled
                 In Heaven's pure light, of him we say,
                 "He fell on the self-same day
               A Greater died to save the world."




               [Illustration: TABLET AT PHILADELPHIA

                    Unveiled February 21, 1903]




He who seeks the embodiment of the genius of the Union finds it in the
apotheosis of the Great Emancipator. There, under the arching skies he
stands, erect, serene, resplendent; beneath his feet the broken
shackles of a race redeemed; upon his brow the diadem of liberty with
law, while around and behind him rise up, as an eternal guard of
honor, the great army of the Republic.

In the belief that from the martyr's bier as from the battlefield of
right it is but one step to paradise, may we not, on days like this,
draw back the veil that separates from our mortal gaze the phantom
squadrons as they pass again in grand review before their "Martyr
President."--_From an address by Hiram F. Stevens, read before the
Minnesota Commandery of the Loyal Legion._


                        THE MARTYR PRESIDENT

                  In solid platoons of steel,
                    Under heaven's triumphant arch,
                  The long lines break and wheel,
                    And the order is "Forward, March!"
                  The colors ripple o'erhead,
                    The drums roll up to the sky,
                  And with martial time and tread
                    The regiments all pass by--
                  The ranks of the faithful dead
                    Meeting their president's eye.
                  March on, your last brave mile!
                    Salute him, star and lace!
                  Form 'round him, rank and file,
                    And look on the kind, rough face.
                  But the quaint and homely smile
                    Has a glory and a grace
                  It has never known erstwhile,
                    Never in time or space.
                  Close 'round him, hearts of pride!
                  Press near him, side by side!
                    For he stands there not alone.
                  For the holy right he died,
                  And Christ, the crucified,
                    Waits to welcome his own.




                          ABRAHAM LINCOLN

            _Written for the Lincoln Memorial Album, by
                       Eugene J. Hall, 1882._


        O honored name, revered and undecaying,
          Engraven on each heart, O soul sublime!
        That, like a planet through the heavens straying,
          Outlives the wreck of time!

        O rough, strong soul, your noble self-possession
          Is unforgotten. Still your work remains.
        You freed from bondage and from vile oppression
          A race in clanking chains.

        O furrowed face, beloved by all the nation!
          O tall gaunt form, to memory fondly dear!
        O firm, bold hand, our strength and our salvation!
          O heart that knew no fear!

        Lincoln, your manhood shall survive forever,
          Shedding a fadeless halo round your name;
        Urging men on, with wise and strong endeavor,
          To bright and honest fame!

        Through years of care, to rest and joy a stranger,
          You saw complete the work you had begun,
        Thoughtless of threats, nor heeding death or danger,
          You toiled till all was done.

        You freed the bondman from his iron master,
          You broke the strong and cruel chains he wore,
        You saved the Ship of State from foul disaster
          And brought her safe to shore.

        You fell! An anxious nation's hopes seemed blighted,
          While millions shuddered at your dreadful fall;
        But _God is good_! His wondrous hand has righted
          And reunited all.

        You fell, but in your death you were victorious;
          To moulder in the tomb your form has gone,
        While through the world your great soul grows more glorious
          As years go gliding on!

        All hail, great Chieftain! Long will sweetly cluster
          A thousand memories round your sacred name,
        Nor time, nor death shall dim the spotless luster
          That shines upon your fame.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

     By Vinnie Ream, rotunda of the Capitol, Washington, D. C.]




Samuel Francis Smith, clergyman, born in Boston, Massachusetts,
October 21, 1808. Attended the Boston Latin School in 1820-5, and was
graduated at Harvard in 1829 and at Andover Theological Seminary in
1832. Was ordained to the ministry of the Baptist Church at
Waterville, Maine, in 1834, where he occupied pastorates from 1834
until 1842, and at Newton, Massachusetts, 1842 to 1854. Was professor
of languages in Waterville College while residing in that city, and
there he also received the degree of D.D. in 1854.

He has done a large amount of literary work, mainly in the line of
hymnology, his most popular composition being our national hymn, _My
Country, 'Tis of Thee_, which was written while he was a theological
student, and first sung at a children's celebration in the Park Street
Church, Boston, July 4, 1832. _The Morning Light is Breaking_, was
also written at the same place and time. His classmate, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, in his reunion poem entitled _The Boys_, thus refers to him:

         "And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith;
         Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith!
         But he chanted a song for the brave and the free--
         Just read on his medal, 'My Country, of Thee!'"

     The following poem was written expressly for the exercises
     held on the Nineteenth Anniversary of President Lincoln's
     death, at his tomb, Springfield, Illinois, April 15, 1884.


                        THE TOMB OF LINCOLN

       Grandeur and glory await around the bed
       Where sleeps in lowly peace the illustrious dead;
       He rose a meteor, upon wondering men,
       But rose in strength, never to set again.
       A king of men, though born in lowly state,
       A man sincerely good and nobly great;
       Tender, but firm; faithful and kind, and true,
       The Nation's choice, the Nation's Saviour, too;
       When Liberty and Truth shall reign for evermore,
       From Oregon to Florida's perpetual May,
       From Shasta's awful peak to Massachusetts Bay,--
       Then our children's children, by the cottage door,
       In the schoolroom, from the pulpit, at the bar,
       Shall look up to thee as to a beacon star,
       And deduce the lesson from thy life and death,
       That the patriot's lofty courage and the Christian's faith
       Conquer honors that outweigh ambition's gaudiest prize,
       Triumph o'er the grave, and open the gates of Paradise.

       Schooled through life's early hardships to endure,
       To raise the oppressed, to save and shield the poor;
       Prudent in counsel, honest in debate,
       Patient to hear and judge, patient to wait;
       The calm, the wise, the witty and the proved,
       Whom millions honored, and whom millions loved;
       Swayed by no baleful lust of pride or power,
       The shining pageants of the passing hour,

       Led by no scheming arts, no selfish aim,
       Ambitious for no pomp, nor wealth, nor fame,
       No planning hypocrite, no pliant tool,
       A high-born patriot, of Heaven's noblest school;
       Cool and unshaken in the maddest storm,
       For in the clouds he traced the Almighty's form;
       Worn with the weary heart and aching head,
       Worse than the picket, with his ceaseless tread,

       He kept--as bound by some resistless fate--
       His broad, strong hand upon the helm of State;
       Nor turned, in fear, his heart or hope away,
       Till on the field his tent a ruin lay.
       His tent, a ruin; but the owner's name
       Stands on the pinnacle of human fame,
       Inscribed in lines of light, and nations see,
       Through him, the people's life and liberty.

       What high ideas, what noble acts he taught!
       To make men free in life, and limb, and thought,
       To rise, to soar, to scorn the oppressor's rod,
       To live in grander life, to live for God;
       To stand for justice, freedom and the right,
       To dare the conflict, strong in God's own might;
       The methods taught by Him, by him were tried,
       And he, to conscience true, a martyr died.

       As the great sun pursues his heavenly way
       And fills with life and joy the livelong day,
       Till, the full journey, in glory dressed,
       He seeks his crimson couch beneath the west;
       So, with his labor done, our hero sleeps;
       Above his tomb a ransomed Nation weeps;
       And grateful pæans o'er his ashes rise--
       Dear is his fame--his glory never dies.

       Bring flowers, fresh flowers, bring plumes with nodding crests,
       To wreath the tomb where our great hero rests;
       Bring pipe and tabret, eloquence and song,
       And sound the loving tribute, loud and long;
       A Nation bows, and mourns his honored name,
       A Nation proudly keeps his deathless fame;
       Let vale and rock, and hill, and land, and sea
       His memory swell--the anthem of the free.




              [Illustration: STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

         On the State Capitol Grounds at Lincoln, Nebraska.
    Unveiled September 2, 1912. Daniel Chester French, sculptor]




John Townsend Trowbridge, born September 18, 1827, in Ogden, New York.
He lived the ordinary life of a country boy, going to school six
months in the year till he was fourteen, after which he had to work on
the farm in summer. His books had more interest to him than his work,
and he managed to learn more out of school than in it. At sixteen he
wrote articles in verse and prose for magazines and journals. He was a
contributor to the _Atlantic Monthly_.

During the great rebellion, he wrote several stories of the war: _The
Drummer Boy_, 1863, and _The Three Scouts_, 1865. On the return of
peace he spent some four months in the principal southern States, for
the purpose of gaining accurate views of the condition of society
there after the war. He published the result of these observations
June, 1866, in a volume entitled, _The South_. A collected edition of
his poems was published in 1869, entitled _The Vagabonds, and Other
Poems_.


                              LINCOLN

           Heroic soul, in homely garb half hid,
             Sincere, sagacious, melancholy, quaint;
           What he endured, no less than what he did,
             Has reared his monument, and crowned him saint.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

         Burlington, Wisconsin. George E. Ganiere, sculptor
                     Unveiled October 13, 1913]




Kinahan Cornwallis was born in London, England, December 24, 1839.
Entered British Colonial Civil Service; two years at Melbourne,
Australia. Located in New York in 1860, one of the editors and
correspondent of the _Herald_. Accompanied the Prince of Wales on his
American tour. Admitted to the New York bar in 1863; financial editor
and general editorial writer of _New York Herald_, 1860-69. Editor and
proprietor of _The Knickerbocker Magazine_, afterward of _The Albion_.
Since 1886 editor and proprietor _Wall Street Daily Investigator_, now
_Wall Street Daily Investor_. Author of _Howard Plunkett_ (a novel);
an Australian poem, 1857. The _New Eldorado, or British Columbia_
(Travels); _Two Journeys to Japan_; _A Panorama of the New World_;
_Wreck and Ruin, or Modern Society_ (novel); _My Life and Adventures_
(story), 1859, also of many other histories and novels. Among his poet
productions are _The Song of America and Columbus_, 1892; _The
Conquest of Mexico and Peru_, 1893; _The War for the Union, or the
Duel Between North and South_, 1899.


                       HOMAGE DUE TO LINCOLN

             Well may we all to Lincoln homage pay,
             For patriotic duty points the way,
             And tells the story of the debt we owe--
             A debt of gratitude that all should know;
             And ne'er will perish that historic tale.
             To him, the Union's great defender, hail!
             Through battling years he steered the ship of state,
             And ever proved a captain just and great.
             Through storm and tempest, and unnumbered woes,
             While oft assailed in fury by his foes,
             He held his course, and triumphed over all,
             Responding ever to his country's call;
             And more divine than human seemed the deed
             When he the slave from hellish bondage freed,
             And from the South its human chattels tore.
             'Twas his to Man his manhood to restore.
             That righteous action sealed rebellion's doom,
             And paved secession's pathway to the tomb.
             But, lo! when Peace with Union glory, came,
             And all the country rang with his acclaim--
             A reunited country, great and strong--
             A foul assassin marked him for his prey;
             A bullet sped, and Lincoln dying lay.
             Alas! Alas! that he should thus have died--
             His country's leader, and his country's pride!
             No deed more infamous than this--
             No fate more cruel and unjust than his--
             Can in the annals of the world be found.
             The Nation shuddered in its grief profound,
             And mourning emblems draped the country o'er
             Alas! Alas! its leader was no more!
             But still he lives in his immortal fame,
             And evermore will Glory gild his name,
             And keep his memory in eternal view,
             And o'er his grave unfading garlands strew.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

        At Edinburgh, Scotland, George E. Bissell, sculptor]


It is within an inclosed cemetery, known as the Calton burying ground,
which is separated from the Calton Hill by a wide thoroughfare. The
statue is the work of an American sculptor, George E. Bissell. It is a
fine bronze figure, and rests on a massive granite pedestal. The
figure at the base is that of a freed negro holding up a wreath. On
one face of the pedestal are Lincoln's words, "To preserve the jewel
of liberty in the framework of freedom." The statue is a memorial not
alone to Lincoln; the legend on the pedestal tells that this plot of
ground was given by the lord provost and town council of Edinburgh to
Wallace Bruce, United States Consul, and dedicated as a burial place
for Scottish soldiers of the American Civil War, 1861-65. Cut in the
granite are the names and records of Scots who fought to preserve the
Union, and who have found their last resting place in this old burying
ground at the Scottish capital.


David K. Watson was born near London, Madison County, Ohio, June 18,
1849. Moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1875, where he now resides. Was
Assistant United States District Attorney for the Southern District of
Ohio from 1881 to 1885. Elected Attorney-General of Ohio in 1887 and
re-elected in 1889. Member of the fifty-fourth Congress. Was member of
the Commission to revise the Federal Statutes. Author of _History of
American Coinage_ and _Watson on the Constitution of the United
States_.


                        THE SCOTLAND STATUE

             O Scotland! It was a gracious act in thee
             To build a monument beside the sea
             To Lincoln, who wrote the word,
             And slavery's shackles fell
             From off a race
             Which ne'er before could tell
             What freedom was.
             To Lincoln, whose soul was great enough to know
             That beings born in likeness of their God
             Were meant to live as freemen,
             Not as slaves, and ruled by slavery's rod.
             To Lincoln, who more than any of his race
             Uplifted men and women to the place
             God made for them.
             To Lincoln, who never saw your land,
             And in whose veins no Scottish blood had run;
             But yet, because of deeds which he had done,
             His mighty name
             Had filled the world with fame
             And taught the people of each land
             That in God's hand
             Is held the destiny of races and of man.

             Immortal patriot! through the mist of years
             That in the future are to come,--
             When we who saw thee here are gone,--
             We view thy heaven-aspiring tomb
             Illumined by the roseate dawn
             Of the millennial day,
             When Peace shall hold her sway,
             And bring Saturnian eras; when the roar
             O' the battle's thunder shall be heard no more.




                  [Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

             At Newark, N. J. Gutzon Borglum, sculptor]


The statue was unveiled May 30, 1911. It is the gift of Amos H. Van
Horn, who died December 26, 1908. In his will he set aside $25,000 for
a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, to be dedicated in memory of Lincoln
Post, No. 11, Department of New Jersey, G. A. R., of which he was a
charter member.




Joseph Fulford Folsom, Presbyterian clergyman, miscellaneous writer
and local historian, is a native of Bloomfield, New Jersey. He is a
direct descendant of John Folsom who arrived at Boston in the Diligent
on August 10, 1638, and settled at Hingham, Massachusetts.

Mr. Folsom is the pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church, South, of
Newark, New Jersey. He has served two terms as Chaplain General of the
Order of the Founders and Patriots of America. Is Librarian and
Recording Secretary of the New Jersey Historical Society. Edited and
wrote three chapters of _Bloomfield, Old and New_, a history of that
town published in 1912. Wrote the history of the churches of Newark,
including the _History of Newark, New Jersey_, published in 1913. His
poem, _The Ballad of Daniel Bray_, is found in the _Patriotic Poems of
New Jersey_. He is an occasional writer of poems, and contributes
regularly a column of historical matters, signed "The Lorist."


                        THE UNFINISHED WORK

               The crowd was gone, and to the side
                 Of Borglum's Lincoln, deep in awe,
               I crept. It seem'd a mighty tide
                 Within those aching eyes I saw.

               "Great heart," I said, "why grieve alway?
                 The battle's ended and the shout
               Shall ring forever and a day,--
                 Why sorrow yet, or darkly doubt?"

               "Freedom," I plead, "so nobly won
                 For all mankind, and equal right,
               Shall with the ages travel on
                 Till time shall cease, and day be night."

               No answer--then; but up the slope,
                 With broken gait, and hands in clench,
               A toiler came, bereft of hope,
                 And sank beside him on the bench.


           [Illustration: CHILDREN ON THE BORGLUM STATUE]




Wendell Phillips Stafford, son of Frank and Sarah (Noyes) Stafford,
born at Barre, Vermont, May 1, 1861. Educated at Barre Academy and St.
Johnsbury Academy. Studied law and attended Boston University Law
School, graduating therefrom in 1883. Admitted to the bar in 1883.
Practiced law in St. Johnsbury until 1900. Was then appointed to the
Supreme Court of Vermont. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the
District of Columbia in 1904, which position he still holds.

Married February 24, 1886, to Miss Florence Sinclair Goss of St.
Johnsbury. Has contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_ and other
magazines. Publications: _North Flowers_ (poems), 1902; _Dorian Days_
(poems), 1909; _Speeches_, 1913.


                       ONE OF OUR PRESIDENTS

                          (_See page 80_)

           He sits there on the low, rude, backless bench,
           With his tall hat beside him, and one arm
           Flung, thus, across his knee. The other hand
           Rests, flat, palm downward, by him on the seat.
           So Æsop may have sat; so Lincoln did.
           For all the sadness in the sunken eyes,
           For all the kingship in the uncrowned brow,
           The great form leans so friendly, father-like,
           It is a call to children. I have watched
           Eight at a time swarming upon him there,
           All clinging to him--riding upon his knees,
           Cuddling between his arms, clasping his neck,
           Perched on his shoulders, even on his head;
           And one small, play-stained hand I saw reached up
           And laid most softly on the kind bronze lips
           As if it claimed them. These were the children
           Of foreigners we call them, but not so
           They call themselves; for when we asked of one,
           A restless dark-eyed girl, who this man was,
           She answered straight, "One of our Presidents."

           "Let all the winds of hell blow in our sails,"
           I thought, "thank God, thank God the ship rides true!"




                   [Illustration: HEAD OF LINCOLN

    This medal was struck for the Grand Army of the Republic in
       commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of
                          Abraham Lincoln]


Frank Dempster Sherman, son of John Dempster and Lucy (McFarland)
Sherman, was born May 6, 1860, at Peekskill, New York; educated at
home and at Columbia and Howard Universities, and since 1886 connected
with Columbia University where he is Professor of Graphics. Author of
several volumes of poems which are published by Houghton-Mifflin
Company, Boston.

Professor Sherman married, November 16, 1887, Juliet Durand, daughter
of Rev. Cyrus Bervic and Sarah Elizabeth (Merserveau) Durand.

He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.


                    ON A BRONZE MEDAL OF LINCOLN

          This bronze our Lincoln's noble head doth bear,
            Behold the strength and splendor of that face,
            So homely-beautiful, with just a trace
          Of humor lightening its look of care,
          With bronze indeed his memory doth share,
            This martyr who found freedom for a Race;
            Both shall endure beyond the time and place
          That knew them first, and brighter grow with wear.
          Happy must be the genius here that wrought
            These features of the great American
              Whose fame lends so much glory to our past--
          Happy to know the inspiration caught
            From this most human and heroic man
              Lives here to honor him while Art shall last.




               [Illustration: MARBLE HEAD OF LINCOLN

  In Statuary Hall, Capitol in Washington, Gutzon Borglum, sculptor]




Ella Wheeler [Wilcox] was born in Johnstown Centre, Wisconsin, in
1845. Was educated at the public schools at Windsor and at the
University of Wisconsin. In 1884 she married Robert M. Wilcox.
Contributed articles for newspapers at an early age and also wrote and
published a number of books of poems.


            THE GLORY THAT SLUMBERED IN THE GRANITE ROCK

            A granite rock on the mountain side
            Gazed on the world and was satisfied;
            It watched the centuries come and go--
            It welcomed the sunlight, and loved the snow,
            It grieved when the forest was forced to fall,
            But smiled when the steeples rose, white and tall,
            In the valley below it, and thrilled to hear
            The voice of the great town roaring near.

            When the mountain stream from its idle play
            Was caught by the mill-wheel, and borne away
            And trained to labor, the gray rock mused:
            "Tree and verdure and stream are used
            By man, the master, but I remain
            Friend of the Mountain, and Star, and Plain;
            Unchanged forever, by God's decree,
            While passing centuries bow to me!"

            Then, all unwarned, with a heavy shock
            Down from the mountain was wrenched the rock.
            Bruised and battered and broken in heart,
            He was carried away to a common mart.
            Wrecked and ruined in peace and pride,
            "Oh, God is cruel!" the granite cried;
            "Comrade of Mountain, of Star the friend--
            By all deserted--how sad my end!"

            A dreaming sculptor, in passing by,
            Gazed on the granite with thoughtful eye;
            Then, stirred with a purpose supreme and grand,
            He bade his dream in the rock expand--
            And lo! from the broken and shapeless mass,
            That grieved and doubted, it came to pass
            That a glorious statue, of infinite worth--
            A statue of LINCOLN--adorned the earth.




                 [Illustration: THE LINCOLN BOULDER

                          At Nyack, N. Y.]


This boulder had been for two hundred and fifty years a landmark near
the Western shore of the Hudson River, opposite Upper Nyack. The
school children of Nyack contributed the funds to remove it from its
ancient bed and place it in front of the Nyack Carnegie Library, where
it now stands and probably will stand for thousands of years to come,
a monument to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.

The boulder contains the Gettysburg address and was dedicated June 13,
1908.


Louis Bradford Couch, born at East Lee, Massachusetts, October 1,
1851. Son of Bradford Milton and Lucy L. Couch. Educated in the public
schools of Northampton, Massachusetts. Began the study of medicine in
1871, graduating with honors from the New York Homeopathic Medical
College, March 4, 1874, being awarded the Allen gold medal for the
best original investigations in medicine; he was graduated from the
New York Ophthalmic Hospital, the same year, as an eye and ear
surgeon. Practiced medicine for thirty-nine years at Nyack, New York.
Served three years as one of the medical experts on the New York State
Board of Health.


                        THE LINCOLN BOULDER

           O Mighty Boulder, wrought by God's own hand,
           Throughout all future ages thou shalt stand
           A monument of honor to the brave
           Who yielded up their lives, their all, to save
           Our glorious country, and to make it free
           From bondsmen's tears and lash of slavery.

           Securely welded to thy rugged breast,
           Through all the coming ages there shall rest
           Our Lincoln's tribute to a patriot band,
           The noblest ever penned by human hand.

           The storms of centuries may lash and beat
           The granite face and bronze with hail and sleet;
           But futile all their fury. In a day
           The loyal sun will melt them all away.

           Equal in death our gallant heroes sleep
           In Southern trench, home grave, or ocean deep;
           Equal in glory, fadeless as the light
           The stars send down upon them through the night.
           O priceless heritage for us to keep
           Our heroes' fame immortal while they sleep!

                  .       .       .       .       .

           O God still guide us with thy loving hand,
           Keep and protect our glorious Fatherland.




             [Illustration: BAS-RELIEF HEAD OF LINCOLN

                       James W. Tuft, Boston]




James Arthur Edgerton, born at Plantsville, Ohio, January 30, 1869.
Graduated at the Normal University, Lebanon, Ohio, in 1887. One year's
post-graduate work, Marietta, Ohio, College. Editor county and state
papers several years; on editorial staff of _Denver News_, 1899-1903;
American Press Association, New York, 1904; _Watson's Magazine_, 1905.
Editorial writer _New York American_, 1907; Secretary State Labor
Bureau of Nebraska, 1895-9; received party vote for clerk United
States House of Representatives. Author, _Poems_, 1889; _A Better
Day_, 1890; _Populist Hand-book for 1894_; _Populist Hand-book for
Nebraska_, 1895; _Voices of the Morning_, 1898; _Songs of the People_,
1902; _Glimpses of the Real_, 1903; _In the Gardens of God_, 1904.


                         WHEN LINCOLN DIED

            When Lincoln died a universal grief
            Went round the earth. Men loved him in that hour.
            The North her leader lost, the South her friend;
            The nation lost its savior, and the slave
            Lost his deliverer, the most of all.
            Oh, there was sorrow mid the humble poor
                      When Lincoln died!

            When Lincoln died a great soul passed from earth,
            A great white soul, as tender as a child
            And yet as iron willed as Hercules.
            In him were strength and gentleness so mixed
            That each upheld the other. He possessed
            The patient firmness of a loving heart.
            In power he out-kinged emperors, and yet
            His mercy was as boundless as his power.
            And he was jovial, laughter loving; still
            His heart was ever torn with suffering.
            There was divine compassion in the man,
            A godlike love and pity for his race.
            The world saw the full measure of that love
                      When Lincoln died.

            When Lincoln died a type was lost to men.
            The earth has had her conquerors and kings
            And many of the common great. Through all
            She only had one Lincoln. There is none
            Like him in all the annals of the past.
            He was a growth of our new soil, a child
            Of our new time, a symbol of the race
            That freedom breeds; was of the lowest rank,
            And yet he scaled the highest height.
            Mankind one of its few immortals lost
                      When Lincoln died.

            When Lincoln died it seemed a providence,
            For he appeared as one sent for a work
            Whom, when that work was done, God summoned home.
            He led a splendid fight for liberty,
            And when the shackles fell the land was saved;
            He laid his armor by and sought his rest.
            A glory sent from heaven covered him
                      When Lincoln died.




                 [Illustration: A STUDY OF LINCOLN

                 From painting by Blendon Campbell]




Amos Russell Wells was born at Glens Falls, New York, December 23,
1862. His mother removed to Yellow Springs, Ohio, when he was four
years old, and he received his education at the public school there,
afterward studying at Antioch College of that town, a college made
illustrious by its first President, Horace Mann, who died there.
Graduated in 1883, all by himself, later receiving as Master of Arts,
also LL.D. He taught for a year in a country district school, then
entered the faculty of his Alma Mater, where he was a tutor for nine
years. Was professor of Greek, Geology and Astronomy. He joined the
Christian Endeavor Society in 1888, and by it was led to become a
member of the Presbyterian Church at Yellow Springs. When but a boy he
began to write, and edited numerous journals. Later edited an amateur
paper, also a town paper. His first paid contribution was a poem
accepted in 1881 by _The Christian Union_, now _The Outlook_. Wrote
articles often for _The Golden Rule_, now _The Christian Endeavor
World_, and for the _Sunday School Times_.

In December, 1891, he went to Boston and became managing editor of
_The Golden Rule_, a position which he still holds. Since then the
paper has changed its name and three other papers added--_The Junior
Christian Endeavor World_, _Junior Work_ and _Union Work_, all edited
by Mr. Wells. He is also Editorial Secretary of the United Society of
Christian Endeavor and in editorial charge of all its publications.

Mr. Wells' first book, then entitled _Golden Rule Meditations_, but
now _The Upward Look_, was published in 1893. Since then every year
has seen from one to ten additions to his list of productions until
they now number fifty-eight volumes in all. He is a director of the
Union Rescue Mission and of the Chinese Mission of Boston. Is a member
of the American Sunday-School Lesson Committee, an important part of
his work being his association with Dr. F. N. Peloubet in writing the
well-known _Select Notes_ on the International Sunday-School Lessons.


                         HAD LINCOLN LIVED

                     Had Lincoln lived,
             How would his hand, so gentle yet so strong,
             Have closed the gaping wounds of ancient wrong;
             How would his merry jests, the way he smiled,
             Our sundered hearts to union have beguiled;
             How would the South from his just rule have learned
             That enemies to neighbors may be turned,
             And how the North, with his sagacious art,
             Have learned the power of a trusting heart;
             What follies had been spared us, and what stain,
             What seeds of bitterness that still remain,
                     Had Lincoln lived!

                     With Lincoln dead,
             Ten million men in substitute for one
             Must do the noble deeds he would have done:
             Must lift the freedman with discerning care,
             Nor house him in a castle of the air;
             Must join the North and South in every good,
             Fused in co-operating brotherhood;
             Must banish enmity with his good cheer,
             And slay with sunshine every rising fear;
             Like him to dare, and trust, and sacrifice,
             Ten million lesser Lincolns must arise,
                     With Lincoln dead.




                [Illustration: THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL

                      Henry Bacon, Architect]


The Lincoln Memorial will be the costliest monument to the memory of
one man ever reared by a republic. The Capitol, at one end of the
great parkway stretching from Capitol Hill to the Potomac, is a
monument to the Government; the Lincoln Memorial, at the other end of
that parkway, is a monument to the savior of that Government; and the
Washington Monument, standing between, is a monument to its founder.
The memorial will stand on a broad terrace 45 feet above grade. The
colonnade will be 188 feet long and 118 feet wide, and will contain 36
columns, 44 feet high and 7 feet 5 inches in diameter at the base.
Within the interior of the structure will be three halls. In the
central hall, which will be 60 feet wide, 70 long, and 60 high, there
will be a noble statue of Lincoln, while in the two side halls will be
bronze tablets containing the Great Emancipator's second inaugural
address and his Gettysburg speech. The George A. Fuller Company of
Washington are the builders of the Memorial, which will be completed
in 1917.


Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin, born at Argos, Greece, February 13,
1837. Was United States Minister to Persia (1883-1885). Assistant
Librarian in the New York State Library. In 1861-1864 sent two
companies of cavalry to the war. Served in war hospitals, studied art.
Art editor of American Department _Magazine of Art_, also of the _New
York Mail_. Marine painter and illustrator. Among his numerous works
in prose and verse are _Art in America_, _Contemporary Art in Europe_
(1877); _Constantinople_ (1860); _Persia and the Persians_ (1866);
_The Choice of Paris_ (1870), a romance; _Sea Spray_ (1887), a book
for yachtsmen, etc.


                       LET HIS MONUMENT ARISE

                  Let his monument arise,
                  Pointing upward to the skies,
                  Founded by a nation's heart,
                  Grandly shaped in every part
                  By the master-minds of art,
                  And consecrated by a nation's tears,
                  To teach throughout the after-time,
                  To every tribe, in every clime,
                  That toil for others is sublime.




INDEX


  ALLEN, LYMAN WHITNEY: sketch of, 80;
    poem, "Lincoln's Church in Washington," by, 81.

  ALLEN, WILLIAM: sketch of, 173;
    poem, "Springfield's Welcome to Lincoln," by, 173.

  ANTIETAM, LINCOLN AT: photograph, 115.

  "ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN, ON THE": poem by Henry De Garrs, 200.


  B

  BACHE, ANNA: poem, "Lincoln at Springfield, 1861," by, 65, 66.

  BACON, HENRY, architect: Lincoln Memorial at Washington, by, 252.

  BALL, THOMAS, sculptor: "Emancipation Group" in Boston by, 90;
    in Washington by, 188.

  BATES, EDWARD, Attorney-General: portrait of, in "Lincoln and
        Cabinet," 206.

  BAXTER, JAMES PHINNEY: sketch of 22;
    poem, "The Natal Day of Lincoln," by, 22.

  BECKER, CHARLOTTE: sketch of, 61;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 61.

  BENJAMIN, SAMUEL GREEN WHEELER: sketch of, 253;
    poem, "Let His Monument Arise," by, 253.

  BIBLE, THE: Lincoln's fondness for xvi, xxiii.

  "BIRTH OF LINCOLN, THE": poem by George W. Crofts, 19.

  BISSELL, GEORGE E., sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 231.

  BLAIR, MONTGOMERY, Postmaster-General: portrait of, in "Lincoln
        and Cabinet," 206.

  BOKER, GEORGE HENRY: sketch of 208;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 209.

  BOOTH, EDWIN: Lincoln discusses his _Hamlet_, xvii-xix.

  BOOTH, J. WILKES: assassin of Lincoln, 138.

  BORGLUM, GUTZON, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 234, 236;
    marble head of Lincoln by, 240.

  BOSTON: statue of Lincoln in, by Thomas Ball, 90.

  "BOY LINCOLN, THE": picture by Eastman Johnson, 30.

  BRADY, Washington photographer: portraits of Lincoln by,
        _frontispiece_, 20, 86, 93, 97, 103, 106, 108, 122, 124,
         128, 134, 170, 210.


  "BRONZE MEDAL OF LINCOLN, ON A": poem by Frank Dempster Sherman,
        239.

  BROWN, STUART: owner of Lincoln portrait, 82.

  BROWN, THERON; sketch of, 94;
    poem, "The Liberator," by, 94.

  BROWNE, CHARLES F., see WARD, ARTEMUS.

  BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN: sketch of, 161;
    poem, "The Death of Lincoln," by, 161.

  BUFFALO, N. Y.: Lincoln's obsequies at, 168.

  BUGBEE, EMILY J.: "Poetical Tribute to the Memory of Abraham
        Lincoln," by, 201.

  BURLEIGH, WILLIAM HENRY: sketch of, 53;
    poem, "Presidential Campaign, 1860," by, 53.

  BURLINGTON, WIS.: statue of Lincoln in, by Ganiere, 228.

  "BUT HERE'S AN OBJECT MORE OF DREAD": poem by Lincoln, viii.


  C

  CABIN, LOG, Lincoln's birthplace: picture, 13.

  CABIN OF LINCOLN'S PARENTS: picture, 62;
    description, 63.

  CAMPBELL, BLENDON, artist: "A Study of Lincoln" by, 249.

  CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON, THE: description of, 72;
    picture of, 73.

  CARPENTER, FRANK B., painter of "First Reading of the
        Emancipation Proclamation," xvii, 206;
    his account of Lincoln as a dramatic critic, xvii.

  CARR, CLARENCE E.: sketch of, 20;
    poem, "Mendelssohn, Darwin, Lincoln," by, 21.

  CARY, ALICE: sketch of, 130;
    poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 131.

  CARY, PHOEBE, sketch of, 210;
    poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 211.

  CASSIDY, THOMAS F.: tribute of, to the mother of Lincoln, 25.

  CAWEIN, MADISON: sketch of, 56;
    poem, "Lincoln, 1809--February 12, 1909," by, 56.

  "CENOTAPH OF LINCOLN, THE": poem by James Mackay, 181.

  CHAPPLE, BENNETT: poem, "The Great Oak," by, 15.

  "CHARACTERIZATION OF LINCOLN, A": poem by Hamilton Schuyler, 87.

  CHASE, SALMON P., Secretary of the Treasury: portrait of, in
        "Lincoln and Cabinet," 206.

  CHENEY, JOHN VANCE: sketch of, 76;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 77.

  CHICAGO: statue of Lincoln in, by Saint Gaudens, 214.

  "CHILDREN ON THE BORGLUM STATUE": picture, 236.

  CHOATE, ISAAC BASSETT: sketch of, 59;
    poem, "The Matchless Lincoln," by, 59.

  CITY HALL, NEW YORK, N. Y.: picture and description of, at time
        of Lincoln obsequies, 162, 166.

  CLAY, HENRY: Lincoln's regard for, vi;
    his eulogy of, xv.

  CLENDENIN, HENRY WILSON: sketch of, 70;
    poem, "Lincoln Called to the Presidency," by, 70.

  COOKE, ROSE TERRY: sketch of, 132;
    poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 133.

  COOPER UNION SPEECH, by Lincoln; reference to, xii.

  CORNWALLIS, KINAHAN: sketch of, 229;
    poem, "Homage Due to Lincoln," by, 229.

  COUCH, LOUIS BRADFORD: sketch of, 244;
    poem, "The Lincoln Boulder," by, 244.

  CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER PEARSE: sketch of, 206;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 207.

  CROFTS, GEORGE W.: sketch of, 19;
    poem, "The Birth of Lincoln," by, 19.


  D

  "DARWIN, MENDELSSOHN, LINCOLN": poem by Clarence E. Carr, 21;
    portraits of, 20.

  DAVIS, NOAH: sketch of, 17;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 17.

  DEATH OF LINCOLN, 149.

  "DEATH OF LINCOLN": poem by William Cullen Bryant, 161.

  DEATHBED OF LINCOLN: picture of, 144;
    poem on, 145.

  DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: Lincoln on, 68.

  "DEDICATION POEM" of Lincoln Monument at Springfield, Ill., by
        James Judson Lord, 183.

  DICKINSON, CHARLES MONROE: sketch of, 136;
    poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 136.

  "DIOGENES AND HIS LANTERN": campaign cartoon of 1860, 55.

  DOUGLAS, STEPHEN A., Senator: Lincoln's opposition to, xvi;
    attitude of, on the Dred Scott Decision, opposed by Lincoln,
        42.

  DRED SCOTT DECISION: reference to, 42.

  DUNBAR, PAUL LAWRENCE: sketch of, 128;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 129.


  E

  EDGERTON, JAMES ARTHUR: sketch of, 247;
   poem, "When Lincoln Died," by, 247.

  EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND: Statue of Lincoln in, by Bissell, 231.

  "EMANCIPATION GROUP," statuary designed by Thomas Ball: in
        Boston, 90;
    in Washington, 188;
    poem on, by John Greenleaf Whittier, 91.

  "EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, FIRST READING OF THE": painting by
        Frank B. Carpenter, 206.

  "ENGLAND'S SORROW": poem in London _Fun_, 153.

  EUCLID: see GEOMETRY.

  "EYES OF LINCOLN, THE": poem by Walt Mason, 121.


  F

  FASSETT, S. M., Chicago photographer: portrait of Lincoln in
        1858, by, 71.

  "FIRST READING OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION": painting by
        Frank B. Carpenter, 206.

  FLANNERY, LOTT, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 199.

  FOLSOM, JOSEPH FULFORD: sketch of, 234;
    poem, "The Unfinished Work," by, 235.

  FOLTZ, CHARLES G.: sketch of, 98;
    poem, "On Freedom's Summit," by, 98.

  FORD'S THEATRE: picture of, 138.

  FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 226.

  FUN, LONDON: poem, "England's Sorrow" in, 153.

  FUNERAL OF LINCOLN, THE, in White House: picture, 154.

  "FUNERAL CAR OF LINCOLN": picture of, 158;
    poem by Richard Henry Stoddard on, 159.

  "FUNERAL HYMN OF LINCOLN": poem by Phineas Densmore Gurley, 155.


  G

  GANIERE, GEORGE E., sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 228.

  GARDNER, Washington photographer: portraits of Lincoln by, 88,
        95, 112, 118, 130, 132.

  GARRS, HENRY DE: sketch of, 200;
    poem, "On the Assassination of Lincoln," by, 200.

  GELERT, JOHANNES, sculptor: bust of Lincoln by, iv, v.

  GENTRY, MATTHEW, insane friend of Lincoln: poem by Lincoln on,
        vii-ix.

  GEOMETRY: favorite study of Lincoln, xii, 63.

  GETTYSBURG, LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT: in prose form, 100;
    comment by William H. Lambert on, 101;
    in verse form, xii.

  "GETTYSBURG ODE"; poem by Bayard Taylor, 102.

  GILDER, RICHARD WATSON: sketch of, 45;
    poem, "On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln," by, 45.

  GILMER, photographer: ambrotype of Lincoln, 1858, by, 40.

  "GLORY, THE, THAT SLUMBERED IN THE GRANITE ROCKS": poem by Ella
        Wheeler Wilcox, 241.

  GOULD, ELIZABETH PORTER: sketch of, 41;
    poem, "The Voice of Lincoln," by, 41.

  "GRAVE OF LINCOLN, THE": views of, 178, 180, 182;
    poem on, by Edna Dean Proctor, 186.

  "GREAT OAK, THE," poem by Bennett Chapple, 14.

  GUITERMAN, ARTHUR: sketch of, 123;
    poem, "He Leads Us Still," by, 123.

  GURLEY, PHINEAS DENSMORE: sketch of, 155;
    poem, "The Funeral Hymn of Lincoln," by, 155.


  H

  "HAD LINCOLN LIVED": Poem by Amos Russell Wells, 251.

  HAGEDORN, HERMANN: sketch of, 107;
    poem, "Oh, Patient Eyes!" by, 107.

  HALL, EUGENE J.: poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 220.

  HALPIN, CHARLES GRAHAM ("Miles O'Reilly"): sketch of, 215;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 216.

  "HAND OF LINCOLN, THE": cast by Leonard W. Volk, 46;
    poem on, by Edmund Clarence Stedman, 47.

  HANKS, NANCY: see LINCOLN, NANCY HANKS.

  HAY, JOHN, secretary of Lincoln: portrait of, 67.

  "HE LEADS US STILL": poem by Arthur Guiterman, 123.

  HERNDON, WILLIAM H., law partner of Lincoln: presents Lincoln's
        office chair to O. H. Oldroyd, 36.

  HESLER, Chicago photographer: portrait of Lincoln in 1860, by,
        58.

  HICKS, painter of Lincoln portrait lithographed for campaign of
        1860, 49.

  HODGENVILLE, KY.: statue of Lincoln in, by Weinman, 126.

  HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL: sketch of, 170;
    poem, "Services in Memory of Abraham Lincoln," by, 171;
    his "Last Leaf," a favorite poem of Lincoln, xi, xxi.

  "HOMAGE DUE TO LINCOLN": poem by Kinahan Cornwallis, 229.

  "HONEST ABE": campaign cartoon of 1860, 55.

  "HONEST ABE OF THE WEST": poem by Edmund Clarence Stedman, 51.

  HOOPER, LUCY HAMILTON: sketch of, 175;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 176.

  "HORATIAN ODE, AN": poem by Richard Henry Stoddard, 29, 159, 193.

  HOSMER, FREDERICK LUCIAN: sketch of, 134;
     poem, "Lincoln," by, 135.

  "HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN DIED, THE": picture of, 150;
   poem by Robert Mackay on, 151;
   Oldroyd collection of Lincoln Memorials at, _Foreword_.

  HOWE, JULIA WARD: sketch of, 14;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 14.


  I

  INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA: speech of Lincoln at, 68;
    picture of, 69.

  INGMIRE, F. W., photographer: picture of Lincoln Homestead at
        time of Lincoln's funeral, 172.

  "IN TOKEN OF RESPECT": poem, 152.


  J

  JOHNSON, EASTMAN: picture, "The Boy Lincoln," by, 30.

  JOHNSON, WILLIAM, literary friend of Lincoln: Lincoln's letters
        to, v-ix.

  JOHNSTON, JAMES NICOLL: sketch of, 168;
    poem, "Requiem," by, 169.


  K

  KIMBALL, HARRIET MCEWEN: sketch of, 157;
    poem, "Rest, Rest, for Him," by, 157.

  KNOX, WILLIAM, Scotch poet: favorite of Lincoln, vi;
    his poem, "Oh Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud," ix.


  L

  LAMBERT, WILLIAM H.: on Lincoln's Speech at Gettysburg, 101.

  LARCOM, LUCY, sketch of, 164;
    poem, "Tolling," by, 165.

  "LAST LEAF, THE," by O. W. Holmes: favorite poem of Lincoln, xi,
        xxi.

  "LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE": poem by William Wilberforce Newton, 32.

  LEIGHTON, ROBERT: poem, "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" by, 139.

  "LET THE PRESIDENT SLEEP": poem by James M. Stewart, 179.

  "LET HIS MONUMENT ARISE": poem by Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin,
        253.

  "LIBERATOR, THE": poem by Theron Brown, 94.

  "LIFE-MASK OF LINCOLN, THE": cast by Leonard W. Volk, 44;
    poem on, by Richard Watson Gilder, 45.

  LINCOLN, ABRAHAM: poems by, v-ix;
    speeches by, xii-xiv, xv-xvii, xix, xxi-xxiii;
    lectures by, xix, xx;
    his favorite poems, vi, ix-xi, xxi;
    his moral character, xiv-xvii;
    his literary inspirations, xii, xvi-xix, xxiii, 17;
    as a dramatic critic, xvii-xix;
    as a literary artist, xix-xxiii;
    his taste for humor, xx;
    birth 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, 74, 109;
    youth, 14, 17, 29, 31, 32, 46, 47, 142;
    education, 17, 22, 23, 31, 32, 35;
    profession, 34, 36, 37, 147, 148;
    religion, 17, 18, 41, 65, 66, 79, 81, 84, 85, 99, 105, 114,
        125, 135, 223;
    statecraft, 14, 18, 23, 29, 33, 37, 38, 42, 47, 48, 57, 59, 70,
        75, 77, 78, 83, 91, 94, 95, 96, 98, 110, 116, 119, 127,
        129, 131, 136, 141, 148, 161, 163, 183, 189, 193, 209, 220,
        223, 229, 232, 241;
    character, 43, 45, 48, 51, 54, 56, 61, 74, 87, 89, 107, 109,
        113, 116, 121, 123, 125, 127, 131, 133, 135, 136, 139, 141,
        148, 174, 176, 189, 200, 201, 209, 211, 216, 220, 223, 227,
        239, 241;
    death, 15, 18, 24, 29, 31, 61, 75, 92, 99, 137, 138-207, 211,
        219, 230, 247, 251.

  "LINCOLN": title of poems by Becker, Charlotte, 61;
    Boker, George Henry, 209;
    Cheney, John Vance, 77;
    Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 207;
    Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 129;
    Davis, Noah, 17;
    Halpin, Charles Graham, 216;
    Hooper, Lucy Hamilton, 176;
    Hosmer, Frederick Lucian, 135;
    Howe, Julia Ward, 14;
    Mitchell, S. Weir, 125;
    Monroe, Harriet, 119;
    Smith, Wilbur Hazelton, 35;
    Trowbridge, John Townsend, 227.

  "LINCOLN, ABRAHAM": title of poems by, Cary, Alice, 131;
    Cary, Phoebe, 211;
    Cooke, Rose Terry, 133;
    Dickinson, Charles Monroe, 136;
    Hall, Eugene J., 200;
    Sangster, Margaret Elizabeth, 109;
    Townsend, George Alfred, 127.

  "LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, FOULLY ASSASSINATED": cartoon in London
        _Punch_, 140;
    poem by Tom Taylor on, 141.

  LINCOLN, AMBROTYPES OF: 34, 40, 42, 52.

  "LINCOLN AND CABINET": painting by Frank B. Carpenter, 206.

  "LINCOLN AND STANTON": poem by Marion Mills Miller, 148.

  "LINCOLN AS CANDIDATE FOR SENATOR": ambrotype by Gilmer, 1858,
        40.

  "LINCOLN AT SPRINGFIELD, 1861": poem by Anna Bache, 66.

  "LINCOLN AT THE TIME OF DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS": ambrotype in 1858,
        42.

  LINCOLN, BAS-RELIEF HEAD OF: by James W. Tuft, 246.

  LINCOLN, BUST OF: by Johannes Gelert, iv.

  "LINCOLN BY THE CABIN FIRE": picture, 16.

  "LINCOLN CALLED TO THE PRESIDENCY": poem by Henry Wilson
        Clendenin, 70.

  LINCOLN, CARTOONS OF: "Abraham Lincoln Foully Assassinated," 140;
    "Honest Abe," 55.

  "LINCOLN, 1809--FEBRUARY 12, 1909" poem by Madison Cawein, 56.

  "LINCOLN, 1865": poem by John Nichol, 204.

  LINCOLN, DEATH OF, 149.

  LINCOLN, HAND OF: cast by Leonard W. Volk, 46.

  LINCOLN, HEAD OF: in marble, by Borglum, at Washington, 240.

  "LINCOLN IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR": poem by James Riley, 37.

  LINCOLN, LIFE-MASK OF: by Leonard W. Volk, 44.

  LINCOLN, MEDALLION OF: Bronze Head in Commemoration of Lincoln
        Centenary, 238.

  "LINCOLN, MENDELSSOHN, DARWIN": poem by Clarence E. Carr, 21;
    portraits of, 20.

  LINCOLN, MONUMENTS OF: Lincoln Memorial at Washington, by Bacon,
        Henry, 252;
    Lincoln Monument in Springfield, Ill., by Mead, Larken G., 182.

  LINCOLN, OFFICE CHAIR OF: picture, 36.

  LINCOLN, PHOTOGRAPHS OF: Brady's, _frontispiece_, 20, 86, 93, 97,
        103, 106, 108, 122, 124, 128, 134, 170, 210;
    Fassett's, 71;
    Gardner's, 88, 95, 112, 118, 130, 132;
    Gilmer's, 40;
    Hesler's, 58;
    by unidentified photographers, 34, 42, 52, 60, 67, 82, 84, 120.

  LINCOLN, PICTURES OF: "Boy Lincoln, The," by Eastman Johnson, 30;
    "Lincoln, by the Cabin Fire," 16;
    "Rail Splitter, The," 28.

  "LINCOLN, POETIC SPIRIT OF": introduction by Marion Mills Miller,
        v.

  LINCOLN, PORTRAIT PAINTINGS OF: "A Study of Lincoln," by
        Campbell, Blendon, 249;
    in "Lincoln and Cabinet," by Carpenter, Frank B., 206;
    by Hicks, 49.

  "LINCOLN, PRESIDENT, TO," poem by Edmund Ollier, 96.

  "LINCOLN'S CHURCH IN WASHINGTON": picture of, 79;
    poem by Lyman Whitney Allen, 81.

  "LINCOLN, SOLDIER OF CHRIST": poem in _Macmillan's Magazine_, 85.

  LINCOLN, SPEECHES OF: in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 68;
    on leaving Springfield, 65.

  LINCOLN, STUDIES OF: by Ball, in Boston, 90, and in Washington,
        188;
    by Bissell, in Edinburgh, Scotland, 231;
    by Borglum in Newark, N. J., 234, 236;
    by Flannery, in Washington, 199;
    by French, in Lincoln, Neb., 226;
    by Ganiere, in Burlington, Wis., 228;
    by Niehaus, in Muskegon, Mich., 203;
    by Ream, in Washington, 222;
    by Rogers, in Philadelphia, 208;
    by Saint Gaudens, in Chicago, 214;
    by Weinman, in Hodgenville, Ky., 126;
    by Volk, 192.

  "LINCOLN THE LABORER": poem by Richard Henry Stoddard, 29.

  "LINCOLN THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE": poem by Edwin Markham, 74.

  "LINCOLN BOULDER, THE": picture of, 243;
    poem on, by Louis Bradford Couch, 244.

  LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, Springfield, Ill.: picture of, in 1861, 64;
    in 1865, 172.

  LINCOLN, NANCY HANKS, mother of Lincoln: tomb of, 25;
    poem on, by Harriet Monroe, 26.

  LINCOLN, NEB.: statue of Lincoln in, by French. 226.

  LINCOLN, SARAH BUSH, stepmother of Lincoln: cabin of, 62;
    her parting from Lincoln, 63.

  LINCOLN, THOMAS, father of Lincoln: cabin of, 62, 63.

  LINCOLN, THOMAS ("Tad"), son of Lincoln: portrait of, 103.

  LOCKE, DAVID R., see NASBY, PETROLEUM V.

  "LOG CABIN, THE," birthplace of Lincoln: picture of, 13.

  LORD, JAMES JUDSON: sketch of, 183;
    poem at dedication of Lincoln Monument at Springfield, Ill.,
        by, 183.

  LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL: sketch of, 189;
    poem, "Commemoration Ode," by, 189.


  M

  MACKAY, JAMES: sketch of, 181;
    poem, "The Cenotaph of Lincoln," by, 181.

  MACKAY, ROBERT: sketch of, 151;
    poem, "The House where Lincoln Died," by, 151.

  MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE: poem, "Lincoln, Soldier of Christ," in, 85.

  "MAN LINCOLN, THE": poem by Wilbur Dick Nesbit, 113.

  MARKHAM, EDWIN: sketch of, 74;
    poem, "Lincoln the Man of the People," by, 74.

  "MARTYR PRESIDENT, THE": poem, 219.

  MASON, WALT: sketch of, 121;
    poem, "The Eyes of Lincoln," by, 121.

  "MASTER, THE": poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, 116.

  "MATCHLESS LINCOLN, THE": poem by Isaac Bassett Choate, 59.

  MEAD, LARKEN G., architect: Lincoln Monument at Springfield,
        Ill., by, 182.

  "MENDELSSOHN, DARWIN, LINCOLN": poem by Clarence E. Carr, 21;
    portraits of, 20.

  MILLER, MARION MILLS: editorial assistance by, in "The Poets'
        Lincoln," _Acknowledgment_;
    introduction by, v;
    sketch of, 146;
    poem, "Lincoln and Stanton," by, 148.

  MITCHELL, S. WEIR: sketch of, 125;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 125.

  MONROE, HARRIET: sketch of, 26;
    poems, "Nancy Hanks," 26, and "Lincoln," 119.

  MUSKEGON, MICH.: statue of Lincoln in, by Niehaus, 203.

  "MY CHILDHOOD'S HOME I SEE AGAIN": poem by Lincoln, vi.


  N

  "NASBY, PETROLEUM V." (David R. Locke), humorist: Lincoln's
        fondness for, xx.

  "NATAL DAY OF LINCOLN, THE": poem by James Phinney Baxter, 22.

  NESBIT, WILBUR DICK: sketch of, 113;
    poem, "The Man Lincoln," by, 113.

  NEWARK, N. J., Statue of Lincoln in, by Borglum, 234, 236.

  NEWTON, WILLIAM WILBERFORCE: sketch of, 32;
    poem, "Leader of His People," by, 32.

  NEW YORK AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON: picture of, 79.

  NEW YORK CITY: obsequies of Lincoln at, 162, 166.

  NICHOL, JOHN: sketch of, 204;
    poem, "Lincoln, 1865," by, 204.

  NICOLAY, JOHN G., secretary of Lincoln: his account of Lincoln's
        lectures, xix;
    portrait of, 67.

  NIEHAUS, CHARLES, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 202.

  NYACK, N. Y.: Lincoln Boulder at, 243.


  O

  OAK RIDGE CEMETERY, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.: views in, 178, 180.

  "O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!" poem by Walt Whitman, 197.

  "ODE" on Lincoln's obsequies: by Henry T. Tuckerman, 163.

  "OH, PATIENT EYES!" poem by Hermann Hagedorn, 107.

  "OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?" by William Knox,
        favorite poem of Lincoln, vi, ix.

  OLDROYD, OSBORN H.: editor of "The Poets' Lincoln"; his purpose,
        _Foreword_;
    his collection of Lincoln memorials, _Foreword_;
    owner of Lincoln's office chair, 36.

  OLLIER, EDMUND: poem, "To President Lincoln," by, 96.

  "ONE OF OUR PRESIDENTS": poem by Wendell Phillips Stafford, 237.

  "ON FREEDOM'S SUMMIT": poem by Charles G. Foltz, 98.

  "O'REILLY, MILES," see HALPIN, CHARLES GRAHAM.


  P

  "PEACEFUL LIFE, A": poem by James Whitcomb Riley, 31.

  PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART: sketch of, 43;
    poem, "The Thoughts of Lincoln," by, 43.

  PHILADELPHIA: speech of Lincoln at, 68;
    statue of Lincoln in, by Rogers, 208;
    tablet to Lincoln in, 218.

  PIATT, JOHN JAMES: sketch of, 83;
    poem, "Sonnet in 1862," by, 83.

  "POETICAL TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN": by Emily J.
        Bugbee, 201.

  "POETIC SPIRIT OF LINCOLN": introduction by Marion Mills Miller,
        v.

  POLK, JAMES K., President: Lincoln's arraignment of, xvi.

  "PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 1860": poem by William Henry Burleigh, 53.

  PROCTOR, EDNA DEAN: sketch of, 186;
    poem, "The Grave of Lincoln," by, 186.

  PUNCH, LONDON: poem on "Abraham Lincoln Foully Assassinated," in,
        140.


  R

  "RAIL SPLITTER, THE": picture, 28.

  REAM VINNIE, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 222.

  REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE: Lincoln's speech on, xv-xvii.

  REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860: reference to, 50.

  "REQUIEM": poem by James Nicoll Johnston, 169.

  "REQUIEM OF LINCOLN": poem by Richard Storrs Willis, 167.

  "REST, REST FOR HIM": poem by Harriet McEwen Kimball, 157.

  RILEY, JAMES: sketch of, 37;
    poem, "Lincoln in His Office Chair," by, 37.

  RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB: sketch of, 31;
    poem, "A Peaceful Life," by, 31.

  ROBINSON, EDWIN ARLINGTON: sketch of, 116;
    poem, "The Master," by, 116.

  ROGERS, RANDOLPH, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 208.

  ROTUNDA, CITY HALL, NEW YORK: picture of, at time of Lincoln's
        obsequies, 166.


  S

  SAINT GAUDENS, AUGUSTUS, sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 214,
        215.

  ST. JAMES HALL, BUFFALO, N. Y.: picture of, at time of Lincoln
        obsequies, 168.

  SANGSTER, MARGARET ELIZABETH: sketch of, 109;
    poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 109.

  SCHUYLER, HAMILTON: sketch of, 87;
    poem, "A Characterization of Lincoln," by, 87.

  "SCOTLAND STATUE, THE": poem by David K. Watson, 232.

  "SECOND INAUGURAL, LINCOLN'S": poem by Benjamin Franklin Taylor,
        104.

  "SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN": poem by Oliver Wendell
        Holmes, 171.

  SEWARD, WILLIAM H., Secretary of State: suggests closing passage
        of Lincoln's First Inaugural, xxii-xxiii;
    portrait in "Lincoln and Cabinet," 206.

  SHAKESPEARE: Lincoln's fondness for, xvi-xix.

  SHERMAN, FRANK DEMPSTER: sketch of, 239;
    poem, "On a Bronze Medal of Lincoln," by, 239.

  "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!", poem by Robert Leighton, 139.

  SLAVERY: Lincoln on, xii, xv-xvii;
    the Dred Scott Decision, 42;
    Lincoln the emancipator, 90, 91, 94, 96, 98, 152, 161, 184,
        187, 221, 229, 232, 241.

  SMITH, SAMUEL FRANCIS: sketch of, 222;
    poem, "The Tomb of Lincoln," by, 223.

  SMITH, WILBUR HAZELTON: sketch of, 35;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 35.

  "SONNET in 1862": poem by John James Piatt, 83.

  SPEED, LUCY G.: autographed portrait of himself given by Lincoln to, 84.

  SPRINGFIELD, ILL.: homestead of Lincoln at, 64, 172;
    Lincoln's funeral at, 172-181;
    state capitol at, 175;
    public vault in Oak Ridge cemetery at, 178, 180;
    monument to Lincoln at, 182.

  "SPRINGFIELD'S WELCOME TO LINCOLN": poem by William Allen, 173.

  STAFFORD, WENDELL PHILLIPS: sketch of, 236;
    poem, "One of Our Presidents," by, 237;
    reference to, 80.

  STANTON, EDWIN M.: tribute to Lincoln dead, 144, 147;
    portrait, 146;
    poem on, 148;
    portrait of, in "Lincoln and Cabinet," 206.

  STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE: sketch of, 47;
    poem, "The Hand of Lincoln," by, 47;
    poem, "Honest Abe of the West," by, 51.

  STEVENS, HIRAM F.: tribute to Lincoln by, 219.

  STEWART, JAMES M.: poem, "Let the President Sleep," by, 179.

  STICKLE, THOMPSON: designer of monument of Nancy Hanks Lincoln,
        25.

  STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY: sketch of, 193;
    passages from his "Horatian Ode," 29, 159, 193.

  "STUDY OF LINCOLN, A": painting by Blendon Campbell, 249.


  T

  TAYLOR, BAYARD: sketch of 102;
    poem, "Geyttsburg Ode," by, 102.

  TAYLOR, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: sketch of, 104;
    poem, "Lincoln's Second Inaugural," by, 104.

  TAYLOR, TOM: poem, "Abraham Lincoln, Foully Assassinated," by,
        141.

  "THOUGHTS OF LINCOLN, THE": poem by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 43.

  TIEFENTHALER, JOSEPHINE OLDROYD, child guide in the "House where
        Lincoln Died": portrait, 150;
    reference to, 151, 152.

  "TOMB OF LINCOLN, THE": poem by Samuel Francis Smith, 223.

  TOWNSEND, GEORGE ALFRED: sketch of, 126;
    poem, "Abraham Lincoln," by, 127.

  TROWBRIDGE, JOHN TOWNSEND: sketch of, 227;
    poem, "Lincoln," by, 227.

  TUCKERMAN, HENRY T.: sketch of, 163;
    "Ode" on Lincoln's obsequies, by, 163.

  TUFT, JAMES W., sculptor: bas-relief Head of Lincoln by, 246.


  U

  "UNFINISHED WORK, THE": Poem by Joseph Fulford Folsom, 235.

  UNION, THE: Lincoln on, 100, 102.

  USHER, J. P., Secretary of the Interior: portrait of, in "Lincoln
        and Cabinet," 206.


  V

  "VOICE OF LINCOLN, THE," Poem by Elizabeth Porter Gould, 41.

  VOLK, LEONARD W., sculptor: Life-Mask of Lincoln by, 44;
    cast of Hand of Lincoln by, 46;
    statue of Lincoln by, 192.


  W

  WARD, ARTEMUS (Charles F. Browne) humorist: Lincoln's fondness
        for, xx.

  WASHINGTON, D. C.: statues of Lincoln in, by Ball, 188;
    Flannery, 199;
    Ream, 222;
    marble head of Lincoln by Borglum, in, 240;
    Lincoln Memorial by Bacon in, 252;
    picture of Capitol, 73;
    of White House, 76;
    funeral of Lincoln in, 154.

  WASHINGTON, GEORGE: Lincoln's poetic tribute to, xix.

  WATSON, DAVID K.: sketch of, 232;
    poem, "The Scotland Statue," by, 232.

  WEBSTER, DANIEL: originator of closing sentence of Lincoln's
        Gettysburg speech, xxi, xxii.

  WEINMANN, ADOLPH A., sculptor: statue of Lincoln by, 126.

  WELLES, GIDEON, Secretary of the Navy: portrait of, in "Lincoln
        and Cabinet," 206.

  WELLS, AMOS RUSSELL: sketch of, 250;
    poem, "Had Lincoln Lived," by, 251.

  "WHEN LINCOLN DIED": poem by James Arthur Edgerton, 247.

  "WHERE LINCOLN WORSHIPPED": picture of N. Y. Ave. Presbyterian
        Church, Washington, 79.

  WHITE HOUSE AT WASHINGTON: picture and description of, 76;
    funeral of Lincoln in, 154.

  WHITMAN, WALT: autographed portrait of, 196;
    sketch of, 197;
    poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" by, 197.

  WHITNEY, HENRY C.: author of "Life of Lincoln," v;
    on Lincoln's poetic sensibility, xi, xxi;
    on his habit of reading, 16;
    on Lincoln as a lawyer, 34.

  WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF: sketch of, 91;
    poem, "The Emancipation Group," by, 91;
    reference to, v.

  "WIGWAM, THE," Republican convention hall, Chicago, 1860:
        picture of, 50.

  WILCOX, ELLA WHEELER: sketch of, 241;
    poem, "The Glory that Slumbered in the Granite Rock," by, 241.

  WILLIS, RICHARD STORRS: sketch of, 167;
    poem, "Requiem of Lincoln," by, 167.




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:


Every effort has been made to faithfully reproduce the original book
in this etext. The inconsistent, alternate and archaic spelling and
usage that one would expect in a collection of poets and authors from
1915 and earlier have been preserved. Errors in the Index, obvious
and simple enough to be assumed typesetter's errors, have been
corrected. Other problems and corrections are listed below.

    Page:     1
    Text:     extends his grateful acknowledgment
    Change:   acknowledgement changed to acknowledgment (to match
              spelling of section title)

    Page:     6
    Text:     Abraham Lincoln Foully Assassinated, by Tom Taylor
    Change:   removed comma after Taylor

    Page:     11
    Text:     The Funeral of Lincoln, in East Room of White House
    Change:   removed comma after White House

    Page:     xvi
    Text:     Yours truly,
    Change:   Comma added

    Page:     xvii
    Text:     It matters not to me whether Shakspeare be well or
                      ill acted
    Change:   Shakespeare changed to Shakspeare (alternate spelling
                      used by Carpenter)

    Page:     xx
    Text:     performed this function in a still more
    Change:   added the word "in"

    Page:     22
    Text:     Like all great souls with vision unobscured
    Change:   version changed to vision

    Page:     116
    Text:     May be forgotten by and by
    Change:   fogotten changed to forgotten

    Page:     117
    Text:     Shrewd, hallowed, harassed
    Change:   harrassed changed to harassed

    Page:     172
    Text:     (5) Hon. W. H. Wallace, Idaho
    Change:   Walace change to Wallace

    Page:     172
    Text:     (3) Hon. Lyman Trumbull, Illinois
    Change:   Hon changed to Hon.

    Page:     189
    Text:     And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn
    Change:   wealth changed to wreath

    Page:     216
    Text:     He filled the Nation's eyes and heart
    Change:   We changed to He

    Page:     216
    Text:     Pathetic, kindly, droll or stern
    Change:   added comma after Pathetic

    Page:     223
    Text:     Here, Captain! dear Father!
    Change:   Hear changed to Here

    Page:     243
    Text:     funds to remove it from
    Change:   extra "to" removed

    Page:     252
    Text:     The George A. Fuller Company of Washington
    Change:   removed comma after Company

    Harper's Bazar (page 109) did not change the spelling to Bazaar
    until about 1929.

    No poet is mentioned for "The Deathbed" on page 145. However,
    this poem seems to be "Now He Belongs to the Ages" by William L.
    Stidger, from The Lincoln Book of Poems, published by R. G.
    Badger, copyright 1911, page 30. (available on archive.org)

    Pages v, vi and vii refer to Lincoln's correspondent as both
    Johnson and Johnston. Left as printed.