Primary and Secondary SourcesLincoln's letter to Andrew Johnston regarding what is thought to be his favorite poem, Mortality.
To Andrew Johnston (excerpt) 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. (...) A. LINCOLN. Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln In his book, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln, author Michael Burlingame refers to the poem "Mortality" as having "dirgelike quatrains" that would appeal to Lincoln. The poem certainly would invoke memories from his childhood of his mother and sister who both died when Lincoln was young. Burlingame states, "The fourth stanza perhaps summoned up memories of Ann Rutledge, or his sister, or both." Lincoln is said to have stated to his friends that Knox's verses "sounded to him as much like true poetry as anything that he had ever heard."
Source: Burlingame, Michael. The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Print. (108-109). |
Mortality
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Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave He passeth from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around, and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie. The infant a mother attended and loved; The mother that infant's affection who proved; The husband, that mother and infant who blest,-- Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Shone beauty and pleasure, -- her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who loved her and praised, Are alike from the minds of the living erased. The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne, The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn, The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep, The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The saint, who enjoyed the communion of Heaven, The sinner, who dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. So the multitude goes -- like the flower or the weed That withers away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes -- even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told. For we are the same our fathers have been; We see the same sights our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, we view the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run. The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging, they also would cling; -- But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing. They loved -- but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned -- but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved -- but no wail from their slumber will come; They joyed -- but the tongue of their gladness is dumb. They died -- ay, they died; -- we things that are now, That walk on the turf that lies over their brow, And make in their dwellings a transient abode; Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. 'Tis the wink of an eye -- 'tis the draught of a breath-- From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud:-- Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Source: Abraham Lincoln Online |