Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, July 14th, 2025.

Today's poem is by Vachel Lindsay, who was at one time a household name, one of the most

famous poets, in fact one of the most famous poets, in fact, one of the most famous

entertainers in all of America. Sadly, his fame has not endured, and it's particularly sad because

of his commitment to treating poetry and inspiring other people to think about poetry as a

performative art. And he wrote much of his verse with the

express intention of performing it orally and dramatically or setting it to music so that it could be

sung. The poem for the day is called Abraham Lincoln walks at midnight.

And to me, one of the most fascinating things about any poem about Abraham Lincoln is something hovering outside the poem itself,

and that is the attraction that Lincoln presents to so many artists.

Walt Whitman found Lincoln to be such a source of poetic inspiration.

The same was true for Carl Sandberg, and even contemporary artists, poet Maurice Manning,

whose Lincoln poetry we featured on the show before,

George Saunders with his fantastical novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, even Abraham

Lincoln Vampire Hunter, is, I think, a testimony to this phenomenon, the mystique of Abraham

Lincoln. And whatever your political opinion of him might be, he is undeniably grown into this

mythological figure in the American imagination.

And today's poem is no exception to that.

In fact, Lindsay presents Lincoln in what seems to be largely an imitative allusion to Shakespeare and Henry V.

This brief scene of Lincoln walking or pacing in the middle of the night is highly strongly reminiscent of act four of Shakespeare's Henry

the 5th, a little touch of Harry in the night, King Henry or Howl, walking disguised through

...