Sail on, O Union, strong and great!”

Noah Brooks, remembering more of the poem, speaks:

“Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,

In what a forge and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

Fear not each sudden sound and shock,

’Tis of the wave and not the rock;

’Tis but the flapping of the sail,

And not a rent made by the gale!

In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,

In spite of false lights on the shore,

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,

Are all with thee—are all with thee!”

Noah Brooks sees Lincoln’s eyes filled with tears,

the cheeks wet.

They sit quiet a little while, then Lincoln saying:

“It is a wonderful gift to be able to stir men like that.”

Mr. Longfellow—and his boy sitting propped up in a chair—

with a bullet wound a foot long in his shoulders—

would have liked to hear President Lincoln saying

those words.

Now Mr. Longfellow is gone far away, his boy, too,

gone far away,

and they never dreamed how seventy-eight years later

the living President of the United States, in the White House at

Washington,

takes a pen, writes with his own hand on a sheet of paper

about the Union Ship of State sailing on and on—

never going down—

how the President hands that sheet of paper

to a citizen soon riding high in the air, high over salt water,

high in the rain and the sun and the mist over

the Atlantic Ocean,

riding, pounding, flying, everything under control,

crossing the deep, wide Atlantic in a day and a night,

coming to London on the Thames in England,

standing before the First Minister of the United Kingdom

so the whole English-language world

from England across North America to Australia and

New Zealand

can never forget Mr. Longfellow’s lines:

“Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!”

Collier’s, June 14, 1941

Dan

Early May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind.

Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door,

all sun and no wind,

Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull

Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep,

Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off

against each other on his paws

and head.

African-Americans

Sandburg is a whole man and his concern with the Negroes’ drive for equality and justice has affected every part of him, politically and artistically . . . The problem of racial equality has never been far from Sandburg’s mind.