Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all.

The line reads like an orator’s appeal: the speaker wishes he could awaken in his listeners the qualities associated with Abraham Lincoln—moral courage, plainspoken integrity, democratic sympathy, and a capacity to rise to national crisis. The archaic “Would I might” heightens the tone into something prayerful or incantatory, suggesting that such civic virtue is not automatic but must be stirred. In Lindsay’s work, Lincoln often functions less as a historical figure than as an American ideal; the phrase therefore implies a call to personal responsibility and public-mindedness, urging an audience to embody the best of the nation’s conscience rather than merely admire it.