Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

‘‘My Childhood-Home I See Again,’’ [25 February 1846]1

My childhood-home I see again,
And gladden with the view;

And still as mem’ries crowd my brain,
There’s sadness in it too–2
O memory! thou mid-way world
’Twixt Earth and Paradise;

Where things decayed, and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise–
And freed from all that’s gross or vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,

Like scenes in some enchanted isle,
All bathed in liquid light–
As distant mountains please the eye,
When twilight chases day–

As bugle-tones, that, passing by,
In distance die away–
As leaving some grand water-fall
We ling’ring list it’s roar,

So memory will hallow all
We’ve known, but know no more–
Now twenty years have passed away,
Since here I bid farewell

To woods, and fields, and scenes of play
And school-mates loved so well–

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Where many were, how few remain
Of old familiar things!

But seeing these to mind again
The lost and absent brings–
The friends I left that parting day–
How changed, as time has sped!

Young child hood grown, strong manhood grey,
And half of all are dead–
I hear the lone survivors tell
How nought from death could save,

Till every sound appears a knell
And every spot a grave–
I range the fields with pensive tread,
I pace the hollow rooms;

And feel (companion of the dead)
I’m living in the tombs–
A here’s an object more of dread,
Than ought the grave contains–

A human-form, with reason fled,
While wretched life remains–3
Poor Matthew! once of genius bright,–
A fortune-favored child–

Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man wild–

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Poor Matthew! I have ne’er forgot
When first with maddened will,

Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
And mother strove to kill;
And terror spread, and neighbours ran,
Your dang’rous strength to bind;

And soon a howling crazy man,
Your limbs were fast confined–
How then you writhed and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinnews bared;

And fiendish on the gaping crowd,
With burning eye-balls glared–
And begged, and swore, and wept, and prayed,
With maniac laughter joined–

How fearful are the signs displayed,
By pangs that kill the mind!
And when at length, tho’ drear and long,
Time soothed your fiercer woes–

How plaintively your mournful song,
Upon the still night rose–
I’ve heard it oft, as if I dreamed,
Far-distant, sweet and lone;

The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone–

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To drink it’s strains I’ve stole away,
All silently and still,

Ere yet the rising god of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill–
Air held his breath; the trees all still
Seemed sorr’wing angels round:

Their swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the list’ning ground–
But this is past, and nought remains
That raised you o’er the brute–

Your mad’ning shrieks and soothing strains
Are like forever mute–
Now fare thee well: more thou the cause
Than subject now of woe.

All mental pangs, by time’s kind laws,
Hast lost the power to know–
And now away to seek some scene
Less painful than the last–

With less of horror mingled in
The present and the past–
The very spot where grew the bread,
That formed my bones, I see.

How strange, old field, on thee to tread,
And feel I’m part of thee!

1The date of this manuscript in Abraham Lincoln’s hand is unknown. The editors have dated it the day following his letter to Andrew Johnston on February 24, in which Lincoln stated that his poem consisting of four cantos was “almost done.” The first ten stanzas here were sent to Johnston enclosed in a letter dated April 18, 1846. This manuscript likely represents the first two cantos of the four Lincoln mentions in the letter. On September 6, 1846, Lincoln sent a slightly different version of the last fourteen stanzas to Johnston. A later poem, mentioned in the letter to Johnston on September 6, 1846, and titled “The Bear Hunt,” may represent a third canto of this piece. The fourth canto is unknown. The first two cantos were published anonymously in the May 5, 1847 Quincy Whig under the title “The Return.”

2In an April 18, 1846 letter to Johnston, Lincoln stated that the first canto of his poem was inspired by an 1844 trip to the area of southern Indiana where he had lived from 1816 to 1830. The purpose of the trip to his boyhood home was to canvass for presidential hopeful Henry Clay. It was published anonymously in the Quincy Whig on May 5, 1847, with the heading “Part I: Reflection.”

3The second canto of the poem, which begins with this stanza, was sent in a slightly different form to Johnston on September 6, 1846. It was published anonymously in the Quincy Whig on May 5, 1847, with the heading “Part II: The Maniac.”