Lincoln

By Vachel Lindsay 1879–1931 Vachel Lindsay

Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,

That which is gendered in the wilderness

From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.

Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,

Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,

Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,

Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire—

Fire that freed the slave.

Source: General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems (1913)

Biography

Vachel Lindsay became famous in his day as a traveling bard whose dramatic delivery in public readings helped keep appreciation for poetry as a spoken art alive in the American Midwest. With their strong rhythms rooted in the American vernacular, revival meetings, the soap box, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe and William Blake, poems such as "The Santa Fe Trail," "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight," and "The Congo" have become . . .

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