Abe's poetry

To Rosa
You are young, and I am older;
You are hopeful, I am not -
Enjoy life, ere it grow colder -
Pluck the roses ere they rot.

Teach your beau to heed the lay -
That sunshine soon is lost in shade -
That now's as good as any day -
To take thee, Rosa, ere she fade.
Abraham Lincoln


This spoke to me first and foremost because it was written by Abraham Lincoln. This style of poetry is easily read and understand. This come from the point of view of an older man giving advice to a young female telling here to take life by the reigns. “To Rosa” by Abraham Lincoln also carries with it a warning. “Pluck the roses ere they rot” is a metaphor saying that you should enjoy life while you are young and capable instead of old and gloomy. We all know Carpe Diem means “seize  the day”” but in all the other poems I read nothing addressed the possibility of consequence. They listed that you would miss out on opportunity but never said that you could have the same prize, but it would “rot” or be less valuable to you. This poem sheds both a positive and negative light on Carpe Diem
Abraham Lincoln (1809 ~1865) was the sixteenth President of the United States during the war between the states which fought  preserve the Union and those that sought to succeed from it. He created peace only to be assassinated as the war was coming to an end. The first Republican elected to the office of President of the United States, Lincoln had been a lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives. The Department of English, University of Toronto web site, "Lincoln wrote the verses in the autograph album of Rosa Haggard, daughter of the proprietor of the hotel at Winchester, Illinois, where he stayed when speaking at that place on the same date." He actually intended this to be a song. Written for baritones and following the same musical structure. He wrote this in a tried stage of his presidency when he realized that life couldn't hold the same beauty it once did, therefore he urged a youth to find this beauty.