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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  The Centoaph

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Centoaph

By James Thomson McKay (1843–1890)

On the Final Burial of Lincoln at Springfield, 14 April, 1887.

AND so they buried Lincoln? Strange and vain!

Has any creature thought of Lincoln hid

In any vault, ’neath any coffin-lid,

In all the years since that wild Spring of pain?

’Tis false,—he never in the grave hath lain.

You could not bury him although you slid

Upon his clay the Cheops pyramid

Or heaped it with the Rocky Mountain chain.

They slew themselves; they but set Lincoln free.

In all the earth his great heart beats as strong,

Shall beat while pulses throb to chivalry

And burn with hate of tyranny and wrong.

Whoever will may find him, anywhere

Save in the tomb. Not there,—he is not there!

The Century Magazine. 1890.