Well, then, your negro’s freed! But what of that? You do not want him for a friend or spouse. I would not see him whipped, or made a bond. But tell me what you’re thinking of who say His freedom is a gain for liberty? To buy men’s labor is to buy their bodies. Your country now has entered on a course Of buying labor, wait and see what comes! I see processions filing through your land. They carry banners bearing Lincoln’s face. And there are hordes who think the kingdom’s coming: As Lincoln freed the slaves, one will arise To free all men! The signs before the war Are come again, portentous stars appear Which prophesied the war! All revolutions Are so announced, the world is rising higher Through ordered revolutions, preordained! Well, certain men look at these mad processions From well-protected windows, with a smile-- They are your millionaires, they think they know The soul of Lincoln better than the crowds That carry banners with his picture on them. Yes, all they have they owe to Lincoln, they Grew strong through Lincoln. But are you content To have your negroes free, and millionaires In mastership of your republic? Where Are men to overlord your millionaires? You know Out of the eater comes forth meat, who will Exhaust the strength of those whose strength was gained From blood of boys shed on the battle field? What can you do to have a Renaissance That with a terrible light will drive to covert Owls, bats, and mousing hawks, that neither know What life is, whence they come, nor what they are, Who live by superstition, codes of slaves, Fear truth, are weak, and only hunger know-- You must have such a Renaissance or die While slipping smugly, self sufficiently Along a way unvisioned, while you play The hypocrite as it was never played In any place, in any time on earth! These things I see. But let me in conclusion Point to your Lincoln as a man who makes For power and beauty in your country, call it Republic if you will, the name is nothing. I say the vitalest force is love, not hate. I say that all great souls are lovers, but of what? Why, what great Goethe loved! Your master men Should learn of Goethe, hold the crowd through him. And Lincoln was a lover, but of what? Well not the cesspool of the black man’s slavery. He loved the mathematics of high truths, And heightened spirituality, that’s the reason Only a man like me can know him, that’s The reason that your crude American thought Misses the man. OLD PIERY