Poetry in Unexpected Places

Did you know Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States and writer of the Gettysburg Address, was also a poet?

I found this out while visiting his birthplace last week.  In a small shop near the monument at Sinking Springs, I found a very small book containing a compilation of his poetry.  It was all the more impressive after visiting the museum erected in his honor where I learned that Lincoln was mostly self-educated.  He had only a couple years of formal education in what was then called a blab school (due to the fact that they didn't have enough writing tools and therefore all the lessons were oral.)  As a young boy, he enjoyed writing out the letters of the alphabet in the dirt or snow, or even the dust on the window.

He was also a storyteller.  He'd sit at night and listen to his father telling stories, then run out to the fields the next day to recite the stories in a language his younger friends would understand.  They would gather around him and listen, transfixed by his abilities as both an orator and a storyteller, a skill I think that came in handy in his later years.

For a man from such a humble background, he was incredibly well-spoken, and his poetry is beautiful.  I thought I’d leave you with an excerpt from one of his poems about his early life.  Maybe if you’re thinking of seeing the movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this week, you’ll first take a moment to appreciate the man that inspired the (somewhat obscure) film.

My Childhood Home I See Again

By Abraham Lincoln

"...As dusky mountains please the eye

When twilight chases day;

As bugle-tones that, passing by

In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,

We, lingering, list its roar—

So memory will hallow all

We’ve known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away

Since here I bid farewell

To woods and fields, and scenes of play,

And playmates loved so well..."