BUT HERE'S AN OBJECT MORE OF DREAD

Ed: While Lincoln certainly celebrated Death in his presidency, this work from early in his career shows that that most profound student of Shakespeare was himself a poet of the first rank.

But here's an object more of dread
Than aught the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

When terror spread, and neighbors ran
Your dangerous strength to bind,
And soon, a howling, crazy man,
Your limbs were fast confined:

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the grazing crowd
With burning eyeballs glared;

And begged and swore, and wept and prayed,
With manic laughter joined;
How fearful were these signs displayed
By pangs that killed the mind!

And when at length the drear and long
Time soothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose!

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet and lone,
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

To drink its strains I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising god of day
Had streaked the eastern hill.

Air held her breath; trees with the spell
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past, and naught remains
That raised thee o'er the brute;
Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strain
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well!
More thou the cause
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs by time's kind laws
Hast lost the power to know.

O death! thou awe-inspiring prince
That keepst the world in fear,
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him lingering here?

Luxuriating in a Song of Myself

50

There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep--I sleep long.

I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal

life--it is Happiness.

Oh, how I do love you Walt Whitman.

Father Abraham!

Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,Chin up!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,Chin up, turn around!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,Chin up, turn around, sit down!