Carl Sandburg, a poet and scholar of Abraham Lincoln, spoke from the rostrum of the House Chamber in 1959. His address to a Joint Session of Congress commemorated the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Although he spoke in prose, his words maintained the cadence and evocativeness of poetry: Of Lincoln, he explained, “Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as a rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.”
