Such Was The Hero Of Our Race


Typed poem titled "Abraham Lincoln." With a little searching, I discovered it's by Charles Monroe Dickinson. This paper doesn't have the complete poem, I'll reproduce it in its entirety:

If any one hath doubt or fear
That this is Freedom's chosen clime--
That God hath sown and planted here
The richest harvest field of Time--
Let him take heart, throw off his fears,
As he looks back a hundred years.

Cities and fields and wealth untold,
With equal rights before the law;
And, better than all lands and gold--
Such as the old world never saw--
Freedom and peace, the right to be,
And honor to those who made us free.

Our greatness did not happen so,
We owe it not to chance or fate;
In furnace heat, by blow on blow,
Were forged the things that make us great;
And men still live who bore that heat,
And felt those deadly hammers beat.

Not in the pampered courts of kings,
Not in the homes that rich men keep,
God calls His Davids with their slings,
Or wakes His Samuels from their sleep;
But from the homes of toil and need
Calls those who serve as well as lead.

Such was the hero of our race;
Skilled in the school of common things,
He felt the sweat on Labor's face,
He knew the pinch of want, the sting
The bondman felt, and all the wrong
The weak had suffered from the strong.

God passed the waiting centuries by,
And kept him for our time of need--
To lead us with his courage high--
To make our country free indeed;
Then, that he be by none surpassed,
God crowned him martyr at the last.

Let speech and pen and song proclaim
Our grateful praise this natal morn;
Time hath preserved no nobler name,
And generations yet unborn
Shall swell the pride of those who can
Claim Lincoln as their countryman.

Found in "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Edmond Rostand. Published by Hurst, 1907.

There was an amusing inscription in the book:

I won boo-by prize
Jany 18 1908
Towns curd (???) Party


-Click to enlarge photos-

2 comments:

  1. IMHO I think that's "card" party rather than "curd." The A on the following word 'party' is also an open-top script A.

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  2. I was headed here with the same message as Linda. Cool bookmark, though--I admire Lincoln.

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