The Poets' Lincoln Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President
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The Poets' Lincoln Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President - Osborn H. (Osborn Hamiline) Oldroyd
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poets' Lincoln, by Various
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Poets' Lincoln
Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President
Author: Various
Editor: Osborn H. Oldroyd
Release Date: November 7, 2009 [EBook #30420]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POETS' LINCOLN ***
Produced by K Nordquist and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
Click on any image to enlarge.
Poets’ Lincoln
TRIBUTES IN VERSE TO THE
MARTYRED PRESIDENT
Selected by
OSBORN H. OLDROYD
AUTHOR OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
AND EDITOR OF THE WORDS OF LINCOLN
With many portraits of Lincoln,
illustrations of events
in his life, etc.
PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR AT
THE HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN DIED
WASHINGTON, D. C.
1915
Copyright 1915,
by Osborn H. Oldroyd
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Editor is most grateful to the various authors who have willingly given their consent to the use of their respective poems in the compilation of this volume. It has been a somewhat difficult problem, not only to select the more appropriate productions, but also to find the names of their authors, for in his Lincoln collection there are many hundreds of poems which have appeared from time to time in magazines, newspapers and other productions, some of which are accompanied by more than one name as author of the same poem. In a number of instances it has been difficult to ascertain the name of the actual owner of the copyright, the poems having been printed in so many forms without the copyright mark attached.
The Editor in particular extends his grateful acknowledgment to the Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to reprint the Emancipation Group
by John G. Whittier; the Life Mask
by Richard Watson Gilder; The Hand of Lincoln
by Clarence Stedman; Commemoration Ode
by James Russell Lowell, and the Gettysburg Address
by Bayard Taylor; to Charles Scribner's Sons for two Lincoln
poems by Richard Henry Stoddard; and to the J. B. Lippincott Company for the poem Lincoln
by George Henry Boker.
The Editor is also grateful to Dr. Marion Mills Miller for his contribution of the introduction and a poem specially written for the collection, and also for assistance in the editorial work.
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FOREWORD
No great man has ever been spoken of with such tender expressions of high regard as has been Abraham Lincoln. Especially is this true of the tributes of esteem made by the poets to his memory. It is therefore desirable that these should be preserved for future generations, and at this time, the fiftieth anniversary of his untimely death, it is peculiarly proper that they should be presented to the public.
Although they are chiefly the productions of American authors, quite a number are from the pens of appreciative citizens of other countries. From the thousand of meritorious poems which have been written about Lincoln, the compiler, after serious consideration, has selected those within as appearing to be gems; although there were others which he would have been glad to include if space permitted.
The poems and illustrations are arranged largely in the chronological order of their application to the events in the life of Lincoln. The intense sympathy and warm appreciation portrayed therein for our Martyred President, as well as their artistic merit assure the poems a sacred place in the heart of every patriotic American.
The large number of selected portraits and illustrations of events connected with his life, service, death and burial, with brief sketches of authors of the following poems, also forms a compilation of rich material for all readers of Lincoln literature.
The object in publishing this compilation is to assist in preserving the collection of memorials now contained in the house in which Lincoln died, 516 Tenth Street, Washington, D. C.
The volume will be sent postpaid by the Editor at the above address, upon receipt of its price, $1.00.
Osborn H. Oldroyd.
Washington, D. C., September twelve,
Nineteen hundred and fifteen.
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CONTENTS
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ILLUSTRATIONS
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LINCOLN
From a bust by Johannes Gelert
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INTRODUCTION
THE POETIC SPIRIT OF LINCOLN
By Marion Mills Miller
(See biographical sketch on page 146)
Some years ago, while editing Henry C. Whitney's Life of Lincoln
I showed a photograph of the bust of Lincoln by Johannes Gelert, the most intellectual to my mind of all the studies of his face, to a little Italian shoeblack, and asked him if he knew who it was. The boy, evidently prompted by a recent lesson at school, said questioningly, Whittier?—Longfellow?
I replied, No, it is Lincoln, the great President.
He answered, Well, he looks like a poet, anyway.
This verified a conclusion to which I had already come: Lincoln, had he lived in a region of greater culture, such as New England, might not have adopted the engrossing pursuits of law and politics, but, as did Whittier, have remained longer on the farm and gradually taken up the calling of letters, composing verse of much the same order as our Yankee bards', and poetry of even higher merit than some produced.
It is not generally known that Lincoln, shortly before he went to Congress, wrote verse of a kind to compare favorably with the early attempts of American poets such as those named. Thus the two poems of his which have been preserved, for his early lampoons on his neighbors have happily been lost, are equal in poetic spirit and metrical art to Whittier's The Prisoner for Debt,
to which they are strikingly similar in melancholic mood.
In 1846, at the age of 37, Lincoln conducted a literary correspondence with a friend, William Johnson by name, of like poetic tastes. In April of this year he wrote the following letter to Johnson:
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Tremont, April 18, 1846.
FRIEND JOHNSTON: Your letter, written