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Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

To Rosa


              1You are young, and I am older;
              2    You are hopeful, I am not --
              3Enjoy life, ere it grow colder --
              4    Pluck the roses ere they rot.

              5Teach your beau to heed the lay --
              6    That sunshine soon is lost in shade --
              7That now's as good as any day --
              8    To take thee, Rosa, ere she fade.

Notes

1] "Lincoln wrote the verses in the autograph album of Rosa Haggard, daughter of the proprieter of the hotel at Winchester, Illinois, where he stayed when speaking at that place on the same date" (Works, III, 203).


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, III, ed. Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953): 203. E 457 .91 Robarts Library
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2003
Recent editing: 1:2003/6/1

Composition date: 28 September 1858
Form: quatrains
Rhyme: abab


Other poems by Abraham Lincoln