Today -- April 14, 2015 -- marks the 150th birthday of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) and April 15 is the date on which he died. Lincoln loved poetry and trained his reasoning with Euclid's geometry. Here is a brief sample of his own poetry (found -- along with other samples -- at PoetryFoundation.org).
Abraham Lincoln by Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When
From my copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (Signet Classics, 1955), from the section "Memories of Lincoln," I have copied these well-known and thoughtful (and non-mathematical) lines:
This Dust Was Once the Man by Walt Whitman ( 1819-1892)
THIS dust was once the Man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute—under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of These States.
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