From the photographs And the descriptions of your Illinois, Where Lincoln spent his youth, I almost sicken: Small muddy rivers flanked by bottom lands So fat of fertile stuff the grossest weeds Thrive thriftier than in Egypt, round their roots Repulsive serpents crawl, the air is full Of loathsome insects, and along these banks An agued people live who have no life Except hard toil, whose pleasures are the dance Where violent liquor takes the gun or knife; Who have no inspiration save the orgy Of the religious meeting, where the cult Of savage dreams is almost theirs. The towns Places of filth, of maddening quietude; Streets mired with mud, board sidewalks where the men, Like chickens with the cholera, stand and squeak Foul or half-idiot things; near by the churches, Mere arch-ways to the grave-yard. Nothing here Of conscious plan to lift the spirit up. All is defeat of liberty in spite Of certain strong men, certain splendid breeds, The pioneers who made your state; no beauty Save as a soul delves in a master book. And out of this your Lincoln came, not poor As Burns was in a land of storied towers, But poor as a degenerate breed is poor Sunk down in squalor. Yet he seems a man Of master qualities. The muddy streets, And melancholy of a pastoral town, And sights of people sick, the stifling weeds Which grew about him left his spirit clean, Save for an ache that all his youth was spent In such surroundings. And observe the man! Do poverty and life among such people Make him a libertarian? Let us see. At twenty years he is a centralist, Stands for the bank which Andrew Jackson fought, And lauds protection, thinks of Washington Much more than Springfield. That is right I say-- But call him not a democrat.