him. The poem's opening stanza suggests the admiration of the poet for the president:

The stanzas that follow emphasize the turbulence that continues to plague humanity long after Lincoln's assassination. The dead president cannot rest peacefully because the world remains torn apart. Lindsay wrote his poem at the outset of World War I, which would involve unimaginable levels of brutality and inhumanity. Such lines as "He thinks on men and kings. Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep," and "It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men / Seem yet in vain" strongly suggest a figure from the past deeply troubled even in death with the senseless violence that continues to plague the world. Lincoln's tenure in office was, as everybody knows, dominated by the issue of slavery and the outbreak of civil war. No American president before or since has been forced to confront such a horrendous development as that which faced Lincoln, and Lindsay acknowledges the enormous weight of responsibility that Lincoln carried on his shoulders. The theme of "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" seems to be the poet's lament that a figure of Lincoln's decency and stature was desperately needed at the time the poem was written, and that Lincoln's desire for peace and justice continued to remain unrequited.