Dr.

Bray mentioned two of the main pieces of literature that Lincoln

appreciated the most. The first one was Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in
a Country Churchyard, published in 1751, and read by Lincoln in 1824. It
is a lyrical poem with a melancholic tone, as Dr. Bray mentioned. The
other one is William Knox’s Mortality, a poem claimed to be Lincoln's
favorite by many biographers. Dr. Bray described Lincoln as a “death-
haunted man” and he is accurate. After his mother passed when Lincoln
was very young and then his sisters, he was surrounded by the question
of mortality, that is present in both poems.

Like Lincoln, I have a book and a poem that marked my life by changing
my perception and behavior. The book is The Metamorphosis by Franz
Kafka, I have read it Fifteen times by now.
I was 12 years old when I read it for the first time. I wasn’t sure how to
feel about the reading when it ended but I loved it. After 1 year, on my
13th birthday, I found it in the living room table, I sit down and read it
again. This time I was consciously familiar with cruelty and family.
After a lot of re-reads, the pattern was clear to me. When I am usually
worried and/or going through a crucial change, I reflect on my
circumstances in my interpretation of Kafka’s book. 
It always makes me feel better and I like to call this Kafkaesque
syndrome. I can describe it, as a moment near the end of The
Metamorphosis, where my focus is on the transformation, and the real
world disappears for a second. After I am back, my real problems
dissolved when I was gone. Maybe I am unconsciously solving them
while I read the book, I am not sure.

Moreover, the song is a bolero by Oscar Agudelo. He is a Colombian

singer known as Zorzal Criollo. "La Cama Vacía" is my favorite of his
creations, and it was released in 2006. The bolero structures like a poem
with an A, B, A, B rhyme scheme. "La Cama Vacía" impresses me every
time I hear it. 
It starts with two acoustic guitar playing in unison, followed by a bass
that gives the tempo of the bolero. Fifteen seconds later, the voice of
Oscar Agudelo starts to narrate the story, with a manifest fragility,
concern, and guilt, as the story was his. 

"La Cama Vacía" is about a man how received a letter from a sick friend,
where he wishes him good luck and shared his critical state. In the letter,
the friend asks the men to keep him company and express his thoughts
about friendship and loneliness.

This is my favorite part of the song :

“Que esta llamada amistad, es tan solo una ilusión

Cuando uno esta en condición, tiene amigos a granel
Pero si el destino cruel hacia un abismo nos tira
Vemos que todo es mentira y que no hay amigo fiel.”

Translation:
“This thing called friend is just an illusion.
When you are well, you have friends in bulk,
But if the cruel destiny, from the abyss, throws us.
We realize that everything is a lie and there is no loyal friend”.

However, the entire song changed my perception because "La Cama

Vacía" describes the sorrow combine with time, friends and family. I
listened to it when I was 28 years old, and I was focused on my business
when a Colombian friend of mine send it in an email. The song rescued
me from my work obsession. After the song finished, I suddenly noticed I
was alone, and I haven’t talked to my mom or dad in a long time. I
learned my lesson and changed my behavior to be close to my family
and my friends. Now, it hurts to think that there is a lot of people that
feel like the sick friend of the song.

Codiscos. (2004). La Cama Vacía, Oscar Agudelo.Oficial Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9tRkzGpLZQ

Michael Burlingame, Robert Bray, and Paula Shotwell (October 13th, 2017). Lincoln
Legacy Lecture: Lincoln and Education. University Of Illinois Springfield.

Kafka, F. (2013). The metamorphosis. Modern Library Classics.