Abraham Lincoln
No glittering chaplet brought from other lands!
As in his life, this man, in death, is ours;
His own loved prairies o'er his "gaunt, gnarled hands,"
Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers!
What need hath he now of a tardy crown,
His name from mocking jest and sneer to save
When every plowman turns his furrow down
As soft as though it fell upon his grave?
He was a man whose like the world again
Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise;
The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign,
Are battles, not the pomps of gala days!
The grandest leader of the grandest war
That ever time in history gave a place,—
What were the tinsel flattery of a star
To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace!
'Tis to th' man, and th' man's honest worth,
The Nation's loyalty in tears upsprings;
Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth,
High o'er the silken broideries of kings.
The mechanism of eternal forms—
The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through—
Were alien ways to him: his brawny arms
Had other work than posturing to do!
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
Photograph by Alexander Gardner, Washington, D. C., 1865
Rose Terry Cooke was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, February 17, 1827. Graduated at Hartford Female Seminary in 1843. She has written many short stories and a number of books of poems.