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The Poets’ Lincoln

by Osborn H. Oldroyd

94 of 123 · Contents · Download EPUB

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.

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 top 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."

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