Abe
As sixteenth I toiled under the secondary sun
To a poor random farmer and carpenter
I may have been an heir
Transient was his nature and intransigent his ways
Suspect that as journeyman and his regale may do
We followed the settling sun
To the hearthstone of indiana
Whereon that reaking fire of dung and turf and log
And twig and desire
A smattering of formal learning I'm hard bent to aquire
Thus by import and I at large awise but impudent will
I teach myself
So from small books big dreams
Are flickering in sharp relief by pyrolight
Whose flames project a thousand righteous voices
In the crackling and the smoulder
For these are the legends and the keynotes
Born of red eyed jupiter
Whose fiery fray, bold, battles with the comets
I came of age and rode the flatboat down to New Orleans
And on the levees remember shocking
At first hand a man chained to a man
Wheeled around the wrist and arm where brown should be
The shackles of bondship not lost on cuter minds
With blood abounds
Whence the brightest star curves off across the Gulf
In a setting pose as if to return and strike
As a keynote expands through the soft horizons
Of the pulsing beat behind
The smug and predjudice and ill affection spoil
Infect the air like fuss mosquitoes
I must leave or be infected too and so
The eastern seaboard
Transcendental like lifes focus
I see would be a middling point
Very apt then that I should find myself
Amid a field of letters and the caption of the black hawk host
I see the lawgiver as natural as the hawkish eye
Which views through the down of hipocrisy and lie
And when I read reports of Stephen Douglas speech
I was drawn to this reply