The Poets' Lincoln Part 1

The Poets' Lincoln.

by Various.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Editor is most grateful to the various authors who have willingly given their consent to the use of their respective poems in the compilation of this volume. It has been a somewhat difficult problem, not only to select the more appropriate productions, but also to find the names of their authors, for in his Lincoln collection there are many hundreds of poems which have appeared from time to time in magazines, newspapers and other productions, some of which are accompanied by more than one name as author of the same poem. In a number of instances it has been difficult to ascertain the name of the actual owner of the copyright, the poems having been printed in so many forms without the copyright mark attached.

The Editor in particular extends his grateful acknowledgment to the Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to reprint the "Emanc.i.p.ation Group" by John G. Whittier; the "Life Mask" by Richard Watson Gilder; "The Hand of Lincoln" by Clarence Stedman; "Commemoration Ode" by James Russell Lowell, and the "Gettysburg Address" by Bayard Taylor; to Charles Scribner's Sons for two "Lincoln" poems by Richard Henry Stoddard; and to the J. B. Lippincott Company for the poem "Lincoln"

by George Henry Boker.

The Editor is also grateful to Dr. Marion Mills Miller for his contribution of the introduction and a poem specially written for the collection, and also for a.s.sistance in the editorial work.

FOREWORD

No great man has ever been spoken of with such tender expressions of high regard as has been Abraham Lincoln. Especially is this true of the tributes of esteem made by the poets to his memory. It is therefore desirable that these should be preserved for future generations, and at this time, the fiftieth anniversary of his untimely death, it is peculiarly proper that they should be presented to the public.

Although they are chiefly the productions of American authors, quite a number are from the pens of appreciative citizens of other countries.

From the thousand of meritorious poems which have been written about Lincoln, the compiler, after serious consideration, has selected those within as appearing to be gems; although there were others which he would have been glad to include if s.p.a.ce permitted.

The poems and ill.u.s.trations are arranged largely in the chronological order of their application to the events in the life of Lincoln. The intense sympathy and warm appreciation portrayed therein for our Martyred President, as well as their artistic merit a.s.sure the poems a sacred place in the heart of every patriotic American.

The large number of selected portraits and ill.u.s.trations of events connected with his life, service, death and burial, with brief sketches of authors of the following poems, also forms a compilation of rich material for all readers of Lincoln literature.

The object in publis.h.i.+ng this compilation is to a.s.sist in preserving the collection of memorials now contained in the house in which Lincoln died, 516 Tenth Street, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

The volume will be sent postpaid by the Editor at the above address, upon receipt of its price, $1.00.

OSBORN H. OLDROYD.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., September twelve, Nineteen hundred and fifteen.

INTRODUCTION

THE POETIC SPIRIT OF LINCOLN

By MARION MILLS MILLER

(See biographical sketch on page 146)

Some years ago, while editing Henry C. Whitney's "Life of Lincoln" I showed a photograph of the bust of Lincoln by Johannes Gelert, the most intellectual to my mind of all the studies of his face, to a little Italian s...o...b..ack, and asked him if he knew who it was. The boy, evidently prompted by a recent lesson at school, said questioningly, "Whittier?--Longfellow?" I replied, "No, it is Lincoln, the great President." He answered, "Well, he looks like a poet, anyway."

This verified a conclusion to which I had already come: Lincoln, had he lived in a region of greater culture, such as New England, might not have adopted the engrossing pursuits of law and politics, but, as did Whittier, have remained longer on the farm and gradually taken up the calling of letters, composing verse of much the same order as our Yankee bards', and poetry of even higher merit than some produced.

It is not generally known that Lincoln, shortly before he went to Congress, wrote verse of a kind to compare favorably with the early attempts of American poets such as those named. Thus the two poems of his which have been preserved, for his early lampoons on his neighbors have happily been lost, are equal in poetic spirit and metrical art to Whittier's "The Prisoner for Debt," to which they are strikingly similar in melancholic mood.

In 1846, at the age of 37, Lincoln conducted a literary correspondence with a friend, William Johnson by name, of like poetic tastes. In April of this year he wrote the following letter to Johnson:

Tremont, April 18, 1846.

FRIEND JOHNSTON: Your letter, written some six weeks since, was received in due course, and also the paper with the parody. It is true, as suggested it might be, that I have never seen Poe's "Raven"; and I very well know that a parody is almost entirely dependent for its interest upon the reader's acquaintance with the original. Still there is enough in the polecat, self-considered, to afford one several hearty laughs. I think four or five of the last stanzas are decidedly funny, particularly where Jeremiah "scrubbed and washed, and prayed and fasted."

I have not your letter now before me; but, from memory, I think you ask me who is the author of the piece I sent you, and that you do so ask as to indicate a slight suspicion that I myself am the author. Beyond all question, I am not the author. I would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is. Neither do I know who is the author. I met it in a straggling form in a newspaper last summer, and I remember to have seen it once before, about fifteen years ago, and this is all I know about it.

The piece of poetry of my own which I alluded to, I was led to write under the following circ.u.mstances. In the fall of 1844, thinking I might aid some to carry the State of Indiana for Mr. Clay, I went into the neighborhood in that State in which I was raised, where my mother and only sister were buried, and from which I had been absent about fifteen years.

That part of the country is, within itself, as unpoetical as any spot of the earth; but still, seeing it and its objects and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry; though whether my expression of those feelings is poetry is quite another question. When I got to writing, the change of subject divided the thing into four little divisions or cantos, the first only of which I send you now, and may send the others hereafter.

Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.

My childhood's home I see again, And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world 'Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile, Seem hallowed, pure and bright, Like scenes in some enchanted isle All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye When twilight chases day; As bugle-notes that, pa.s.sing by, In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall, We, lingering, list its roar-- So memory will hallow all We've known but know no more.

Near twenty years have pa.s.sed away Since here I bid farewell To woods and fields, and scenes of play, And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain Of old familiar things; But seeing them to mind again The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day, How changed, as time has sped!

Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray; And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved 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, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I'm living in the tombs.

In September he wrote the following letter:

Springfield, September 6, 1846.