No glittering chaplet brought from other lands! <br />As in his life, this man, in death, is ours; <br />His own loved prairies o'er his 'gaunt, gnarled hands,' <br />Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers! <br /> <br />What need hath he now of a tardy crown, <br />His name from mocking jest and sneer to save <br />When every plowman turns his furrow down <br />As soft as though it fell upon his grave? <br /> <br />He was a man whose like the world again <br />Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise; <br />The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign, <br />Are battles, not the pomps of gala days! <br /> <br />The grandest leader of the grandest war <br />That ever time in history gave a place,- <br />What were the tinsel flattery of a star <br />To such a breast! or what a ribbon's grace! <br /> <br />'Tis to th' man, and th' man's honest worth, <br />The Nation's loyalty in tears upsprings; <br />Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth, <br />High o'er the silken broideries of kings. <br /> <br />The mechanism of eternal forms- <br />The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through- <br />Were alien ways to him: his brawny arms <br />Had other work than posturing to do.<br /><br />Alice Cary<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/abraham-lincoln-10/
