Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) studied art in Chicago and New York but, unable to find suitable employment and encouraged to concentrate on his poetry and public readings by a teacher at the New York art school he was attending, became instead a troubadour poet, touring the country by walking from town to town and reciting his poems and prose. Carrying little money on those early excursions, he exchanged his poetry for food and shelter along the way. By 1920 he was famous and greatly loved. “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” written in 1914, depicts the ghost of Lincoln pacing the streets of Springfield, Illinois (the city of Lindsay’s own birth), tormented by the dreadful slaughter of war.
Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) studied art in Chicago and New York but, unable to find suitable employment and encouraged to concentrate on his poetry and public readings by a teacher at the New York art school he was attending, became instead a troubadour poet, touring the country by walking from town to town and reciting his poems and prose. Carrying little money on those early excursions, he exchanged his poetry for food and shelter along the way. By 1920 he was famous and greatly loved. “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” written in 1914, depicts the ghost of Lincoln pacing the streets of Springfield, Illinois (the city of Lindsay’s own birth), tormented by the dreadful slaughter of war.