Abraham Lincoln

No glittering chaplet brought from other lands! As in his life, this man, in death, is ours; His own loved prairies o'er his 'gaunt, gnarled hands,' Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers! What need hath he now of a tardy crown, His name from mocking jest and sneer to save When every plowman turns his furrow down As soft as though it fell upon his grave? He was a man whose like the world again Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise; The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign, Are battles, not the pomps of gala days! The grandest leader of the grandest war That ever time in history gave a place,- What were the tinsel flattery of a star To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace! 'Tis to th' man, and th' man's honest worth, The Nation's loyalty in tears upsprings; Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth, High o'er the silken broideries of kings. The mechanism of eternal forms- The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through- Were alien ways to him: his brawny arms Had other work than posturing to do.