Happy 210th Birthday, Father Abraham!

Hello everyone –

In this edition of Quotemail, we remember the 210th birthday of Abraham Lincoln on February 12th. President Lincoln is widely considered to be one of the “Founding Fathers” of the University of Illinois, which is celebrating its 152^nd birthday this year. Here are some favorite quotations about Father Abraham to commemorate his life and legacy.

“Poem on the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln” (1909)

By Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

* Editor’s Note: Julia Ward Howe was the author of the lyrics for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (composed in November 1861 and published in February 1862).

Through the dim pageant of the years

A wondrous tracery appears:

A cabin of the western wild

Shelters in sleep a new-born child.

Nor nurse, nor parent dear can know

The way those infant feet must go;

And yet a nation’s help and hope

Are sealed within that horoscope.

Beyond is toil for daily bread,

And thought, to noble issues led,

And courage, arming for the morn

For whose behest this man was born.

A man of homely, rustic ways,

Yet he achieves the forum’s praise,

And soon earth’s highest meed has won,

The seat and sway of Washington.

No throne of honors and delights;

Distrustful days and sleepless nights,

To struggle, suffer and aspire,

Like Israel, led by cloud and fire.

A treacherous shot, a sob of rest,

A martyr’s palm upon his breast,

A welcome from the glorious seat

Where blameless souls of heroes meet;

And, thrilling through unmeasured days,

A song of gratitude and praise;

A cry that all the earth shall heed,

To God, who gave him for our need.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) on Abraham Lincoln

Printed in the New York World – 1909

“Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

“Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” (1914)

By Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

It is portentous, and a thing of state

That here at midnight, in our little town

A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,

Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards

He lingers where his children used to play,

Or through the market, on the well-worn stones

He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,

A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl

Make him the quaint great figure that men love,

The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.

He is among us: — as in times before!

And we who toss and lie awake for long

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.

Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?

Too many peasants fight, they know not why,

Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.

He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.

He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now

The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn

Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe free:

The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,

Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,

That all his hours of travail here for men

Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace

That he may sleep upon his hill again?

“Lincoln” by 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.

Until next time –

Rob

Happy Lunar New Year! :)

Hello everyone –

Next Tuesday, February 5^th, marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year in the traditional Chinese calendar. The New Year (or Spring Festival) usually occurs on the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice (December 21 or 22). On February 5^th, the Year of the Pig will begin as the Chinese calendar year 4716 dawns in East Asia and around the globe. To celebrate the Lunar New Year, I have selected two poems for you to enjoy. “Ring Out, Wild Bells” is a New Year poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and “Kubla Khan” (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) celebrates the splendor of medieval China under the aegis of Kublai Khan (reigned 1260-1294), the grandson of Genghis Khan.

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” (1850)

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

“Kubla Khan” a/k/a “Xanadu” (1816)

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As ever beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her daemon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced;

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me,

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Until next time –

Rob :)