The Poets' Lincoln

The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President

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. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 30420
Author: Oldroyd, Osborn H. (Osborn Hamiline)
Release Date: Nov 7, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Oldroyd, Osborn H. (Osborn Hamiline), 1842-1930