The Poets' Lincoln: Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President
History
The Poets' Lincoln: Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Poetry
Up again for the conflict! Our banner fling out,
And rally around it with song and with shout!
Stout of heart, firm of hand, should the gallant boys be,
Who bear to the battle the Flag of the Free!
Like our fathers, when Liberty called to the strife,
They should pledge to her cause fortune, honor, and life!
And follow wherever she beckons them on,
Till Freedom results in a victory won!
They came from the hillside, they came from the glen--
From the streets thronged with traffic and surging with men,
From loom and from ledger, from workshop and farm,
The fearless of heart, and the mighty of arm.
As the mountain-born torrents exultingly leap
When their ice-fetters melt, to the breast of the deep;
As the winds of the prairie, the waves of the sea,
They are coming--are coming--the Sons of the Free!
Our Leader is one who, with conquerless will,
Has climbed from the base to the brow of the hill;
Undaunted in peril, unwavering in strife,
He has fought a good fight in the Battle of Life,
And we trust as one who--come woe or come weal,
Is as firm as the rock and as true as the steel.
Right loyal and brave, with no stain on his breast,
Then, hurrah, boys, for honest "Old Abe of the West!"
[Illustration: "HONEST ABE"
A Campaign Cartoon of 1860]
Madison Cawein was born at Louisville, Kentucky, on the 23rd of March,
1865. Was educated in the city and country schools about Louisville
and New Albany, Indiana. Graduated from the Male High School,
Louisville, in 1886, and the following year published his first
volume, called _Blooms of the Berry_. Since then he published some
thirty-odd volumes of prose and poetry, both in the United States and
England. He died in 1915.
LINCOLN, 1809--FEBRUARY 12, 1909
_Read for the first time at the Lincoln centenary celebration,
Temple Adath Israel, Louisville, Ky._
Yea, this is he, whose name is synonym
Of all that's noble, though but lowly born;
Who took command upon a stormy morn
When few had hope. Although uncouth of limb,
Homely of face and gaunt, but never grim,
Beautiful he was with that which none may scorn--
With love of God and man and things forlorn,
And freedom mighty as the soul in him.
Large at the helm of state he leans and looms
With the grave, kindly look of those who die
Doing their duty. Stanch, unswervingly
Onward he steers beneath portentous glooms,
And overwhelming thunders of the sky,
Till, safe in port, he sees a people free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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