Now Is the Time

To celebrate great men. Two hundred years ago on this date, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, on two different continents, both entered this world. Both would leave it a very changed place. Two individuals, two magnificent and influential men. My attention is drawn today towards the Rail Splitter and his impact. While I've been to D.C. and seen the places - Ford's, the Patterson House, the memorial, the statues, what really touched me was a trip seven years ago with my brother. We drove him to Chicago to begin his doctoral work at Northwestern University. The last night of our trip, we stopped in Springfield. While the city was closed up as we had arrived on an early Sunday evening, we still walked the historic neighborhood where Lincoln spent his early adulthood. We took pictures of his house, where he practiced law and the famous courthouse where he debated Stephen Douglas and issued his prophetic description of the United States. The next morning, we drove to Oak Ridge cemetery to see Lincoln's tomb, an amazing display of Reconstruction-era of memory molding and apotheosis. We saw Lincoln and his family, entombed in the earth and the enormous obelisk rising from his remains. At the souvenir stand outside the cemetery gates, I purchased a small bust of Lincoln that I keep on my classroom desk. Occasionally, I ask him what a good leader should do, either in a classroom or in the White House. Springfield resident and poet Vachel Lindsay penned this about our nation's greatest leader which made me search for the man's ghost as we walked the streets of Springfield that hot August night:

In Springfield, Illinois

IT is portentious, 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 by 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 or 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?