William H. Herndon by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

There by the window in the old house / Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, / My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline, / Day by day did I look in my memory, / As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, / And I saw the figures of the past, / As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, / Move through the incredible sphere of time.

And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant / And throw himself over a deathless destiny, / Master of great armies, head of the republic, / Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song / The epic hopes of a people;

At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, / Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out / From spirits tempered in heaven.

Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on / To the place where his path comes up to the path / Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.

O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part, / And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, / Often and often I saw you, / As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood / Over my house-top at solemn sunsets, / There by my window, / Alone.