pluck

White House china, Abraham Lincoln collection.

On Sept. 28, 1858, Abraham Lincoln visited an inn in Winchester, Ill., in the midst of a heated U.S. Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. A girl named Rosa Haggard, a daughter of the innkeeper, asked Lincoln to sign her autograph album. Here's what Lincoln wrote:

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.

Source Art Beat.

An earlier reference to Lincoln and Douglas on this blog here.