Jan 1, 2010

The Oxford Companion to American Literature | Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,
poem in iambic pentameter quatrains, by Vachel Lindsay, published in The Congo and Other Poems (1914). The poet describes his vision of the “mourning figure” of Lincoln, which paces the streets of Springfield on the eve of World War I, “sleepless” because of “the bitterness, the folly, and the pain” that are abroad in the world.