“Lincoln,” written in 1915, after the beginning of World War I, was in an envelope of poems Sandburg labeled “to be published after my death.” In this poem Sandburg uses the baboon imagery in a fantastic vein, picking up wild jungle scenes, with Lincoln’s hands as a constant, and transforming all into the horror of war. In the jungle, where hyenas “rip the guts of babies,” he re-creates a place of savagery similar to the battlegrounds in the United States during the Civil War and even more similar to those of the European war being waged at that time. Lincoln, now with a baboon face, sings a song to himself, a song the rest of us cannot understand, praying for a gateway, a return to civilized behavior. Like Lincoln with his large hands, the baboon sits with “hands the same as always.”

“Mr. Lincoln and His Gloves” was written for dramatic reading by the French refugee Marianne Lorraine, and she performed it widely in the United States, but the poem did not appear in print until Margaret Sandburg published it in Breathing Tokens in 1978. The poem begins with the incident in February of 1861 when New York socialites laughed at Lincoln with his black gloves at the opera. Sandburg chronicles Lincoln’s travails with gloves, sometimes joking about them, just as Lincoln did.

In 1915 Sandburg wrote “Journey and Oath,” a poem that begins dramatically with an account of Lincoln’s death and the journey of his body back to Illinois. Unfortunately, the remainder of the poem does not live up to the promise of the first lines. In trying to present poetically the reaction of “this man and that” to Lincoln’s murder, Sandburg resorts to bombast, and the forced oath is unconvincing. He did not publish the poem, but Margaret Sandburg included it in Breathing Tokens.

The final poem in this section was also in the envelope Sandburg labeled “to be published after my death.” It is untitled, but its content suggests that it was written at the same time as “Lincoln.” The jungle and the gorilla imagery are there, though this time they are woven into the “mystery” of evolution. Sandburg is facing a question any biographer and reader of Lincoln must raise: How did Lincoln become Lincoln? How did this giant of history evolve “out of the slime of the sea,” out of the jungle? Sandburg invites the reader to see a “mystery without end.”

Just why did Sandburg leave these poems unpublished? There are no easy answers. With “Abraham Lincoln’s Father and Mother,” he may have felt uneasy about reprinting rumors and speculations on illegitimacy. Or he may have thought the poem needed explanatory footnotes to be fully understood, and as a poet who spoke directly to his readers, Sandburg objected to such academic paraphernalia. The latter explanation may also be applied to “Lincoln” and to the untitled poem, both of which were intended to be published only after Sandburg’s death. When he was under the sod, others would or could provide the glosses to his poems. As for “Journey and Oath,” he may have realized that the poem needed revision, put it aside for later work, and never returned to it. And it is entirely possible that Sandburg may have lost or forgotten “Mr. Lincoln and His Gloves.” But these are only speculations. There are no clues among Sandburg’s voluminous papers to help explain why these five poems did not appear in print in his lifetime.