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"We Will See and Know, Our Boy Again"

By Robert Abraham Lincoln "Lynn" Davis

Heads up: Death of a child

Robert Abraham Lincoln "Lynn" Davis wrote this poem after the death of his son, Robert Lincoln Davis, who died 3 November 1918 in Creede, Colorado, of bronchopneumonia during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a month short of his eighteenth birthday. The poem was originally published in a book of poetry Shannon's mother once owned; that book, along with many others, was lost during one of the family's moves, and its whereabouts is unknown. The surviving copy transcribed here, typed on a separate sheet, carries no title of its own — the title above is editorial, quoting the poem's own closing line — but Shannon's mother has confirmed it as the poem Robert wrote about his son, known in the family as Bob.

Black-and-white photograph of an older man in a dark suit sitting on a porch step beside trellised vines, holding a hat in his lap, looking directly at the camera. — Robert, captioned in his own hand at the bottom of the photo: "when I'm blue." A stamp on the back places it in Bisbee, Arizona — matching the 1930 census, which finds Robert there in the household of his sister, Rosamond "Rose" Davis Brown. The caption is consistent with the family account of the despair Robert carried after Bob's death.

Our Faith is such, that we are sure;
That on that great and glorious Day.
When at the bidding of our Lord;
Cloud's break, and shadows flee away.
And we have reached the other Shore;
And stand on that Celestial Plain
Among the Throngs that greet us there;
We will see and know, our Boy again.