If so men's memories not a monument be,
None shalt thou have. Warm hearts, and not cold stone,
Must mark thy grave, or thou shalt he, unknown.
Marbles keep not themselves; how then, keep thee?
O, Uncommon Commoner! may your name
Forever lead like a living flame!
Unschooled scholar! how did you learn
The wisdom a lifetime may not earn?
Unsainted martyr! higher than saint!
You were a man with a man's constraint.
In the world, of the world was your lot;
With it and for it the fight you fought,
And never till Time is itself forgot
And the heart of man is a pulseless clot
Shall the blood flow slow, when we think the thought Of Lincoln!
Edmund Vance Cooke—The Uncommon, Commoner.
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.
Charles G. Hat.p tw—Death of Lincoln.
When Lincoln died, hate died—
And anger, came to North and South
When Lincoln died.
W. J. Lampton—Lincoln.
That nation has not lived in vain which has
given the world Washington and Lincoln, the
best great men and the greatest good men whom
history can show. * * * You cry out in the
words of Bunyan, "So Valiant-for-Truth passed
over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on
the other side."
Henry Cabot Lodge—Lincoln. Address before the Mass. Legislature, Feb. 12, 1909.
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 moulds aside she threw
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.
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.
Edwin Markham—Lincoln, The Man of the People.
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 mould.
E. C. Stedman—Hand of Lincoln.
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.
E. C. Stedman—Hand of Lincoln.
No Csesar he whom we lament,
A Man without a precedent,
Sent, it would seem, to do
His work, and perish, too.
R. H. Stoddard—The Man We Mourn ToYou lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier,
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face.
Tom Taylor—Britannia Sympathises with Columbia. In Punch, May 6, 1865. Assigned to Taylor by Shklby Brooks in his Diary, May 10, 1865. See G. S. Layard's Life, Letters, and Diaries of Shirley Brooks of Punch.
He [Lincoln] has doctrines, not hatreds, and is without ambition except to do good and serve his country.
E. B. Washburn in the House of Representatives on the nomination of Lincoln, May 29, 1860. </poem>
This dust was once the man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose
cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in
any land or age,
Was saved the Union of these States.
Walt Whitman—Memories of President Lincoln. This Dust Was Once the Man.
O captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack; 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 grim and daring?
But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage is 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 my captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
