Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet, The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail, Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves, Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales, Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field⁠— Abraham Lincoln, who padded up and down The sacred White House in nightshirt and carpet-slippers, And yet could strike young hero-worshipping Hay As dignified past any neat, balanced, fine Plutarchan sentences carved in a Latin bronze; The low clown out of the prairies, the ape-buffoon, The small-town lawyer, the crude small-time politician, State-character but comparative failure at forty In spite of ambition enough for twenty Caesars, Honesty rare as a man without self-pity, Kindness as large and plain as a prairie wind, And a self-confidence like an iron bar: This Lincoln, President now by the grace of luck, Disunion, politics, Douglas and a few speeches Which make the monumental booming of Webster Sound empty as the belly of a burst drum, Lincoln shambled in to the Cabinet meeting And sat, ungainly and awkward. Seated so