My Childhood s Home I See Again

Abraham Lincoln, a third-term representative and leader of the Whig Political party statewide. Andrew Johnston, Lincoln's friend, published the Quincy [Illinois] Whig Paper and was a fellow member of the Whig Party in the 1840s. Although politics was their showtime bond, Johnston and Lincoln shared an involvement in poetry and corresponded about it.

In the spring of 1846, Abraham Lincoln completed the limerick of one of his most serious poems, which dealt with his emotions upon visiting his childhood dwelling. It is divided into ii cantos. The beginning section was mailed to Lincoln's friend and swain political leader, Andrew Johnston, on April eighteen, 1846. The second was mailed on September 6, 1846. On May 5, 1847, Johnston published Lincoln's poem anonymously both cantos in the Quincy Whig Paper  (The Herald-Whig, today) and titled information technology as "The Return." The kickoff canto was dubbed "Function I – Reflection," and the second, "Part 2 – The Maniac."

This undated photo shows the office of the Quincy Whig Newspaper when it was on Hampshire Street. Andrew Johnston was an editor there who published Lincoln'southward poem "My Childhood Abode I See Again" titled equally "The Return" in the paper on May v, 1847.

Lincoln offered Johnston an explanation of the verse form, "My Babyhood Dwelling I See Again," saying he had visited his adolescence neighborhood in southern Indiana in the fall of 1844 while campaigning for presidential hopeful Henry Clay. He commented that the region was "every bit unpoetical every bit any spot of the earth," but information technology brought back memories of loved ones such as his mother and sister who lay cached there.

My Childhood Home I See Again

by Abraham Lincoln

Published as "The Return" in 1847

— Part I – Reflection —

My childhood's dwelling house I see again,

And sadden with the view;

And all the same, as memory crowds my encephalon,

There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! grand midway world

'Twixt earth and paradise,

Where things decayed and loved ones lost

In dreamy shadows ascent,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,

Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,

Like scenes in some enchanted isle

All bathed in liquid light.

Every bit dusky mountains please the eye

When twilight chases day;

Equally bugle-tones that, passing by,

In altitude dice away;

Every bit leaving some thousand waterfall,

We, lingering, list its roar--

So retentivity will hallow all

We've known, but know no more.

Almost xx years take passed away

Since here I bid bye

To woods and fields, and scenes of play,

And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, simply 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, stiff manhood grayness,

And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell

How nought from expiry could relieve,

Till every sound appears a knell,

And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,

And footstep the hollow rooms,

And experience (companion of the dead)

I'm living in the tombs.

Lincoln made Matthew Gentry the subject area of Role II, telling Andrew Johnston: "He is three years older than I, and when nosotros were boys we went to school together. He was rather a bright lad and the son of the rich man of our poor neighborhood. At the age of xix, he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity. When, equally I told you in my other letter of the alphabet I visited my old domicile in the fall of 1844, I establish him all the same lingering in this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood, I could not forget the impression his case made upon me."

— Part II – The Maniac —

But here's an object more of dread

Than ought the grave contains--

A man class with reason fled,

While wretched life remains.

Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,

A fortune-favored child--

Now locked for yeah, in mental nighttime,

A haggard mad-homo wild.

Poor Matthew! I have ne'er forgot,

When first, with maddened will,

Yourself you maimed, your father fought,

And mother strove to kill;

When terror spread, and neighbors ran,

Your dange'rous forcefulness to bind;

And presently, a howling crazy man

Your limbs were fast bars.

How then yous strove and shrieked aloud,

Your bones and sinews bared;

And fiendish on the gazing crowd,

With burning eye-balls glared--

And begged, and swore, and wept and prayed

With maniac laught[ter?] joined--

How fearful were those signs displayed

By pangs that killed thy mind!

And when at length, tho' drear and long,

Time smoothed thy fiercer woes,

How plaintively thy mournful song

Upon the yet dark rose.

I've heard it oft, as if I dreamed,

Far distant, sweet, and lone--

The funeral dirge, information technology ever seemed

Of reason dead and gone.

To beverage it'south strains, I've stole away,

All stealthily and nonetheless,

Ere yet the rising God of day

Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Air held his breath; copse, with the spell,

Seemed sorrowing angels round,

Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell

Upon the listening ground.

But this is by; and nought remains,

That raised thee o'er the brute.

Thy piercing shrieks, and soothing strains,

Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well--more thou the cause,

Than subject field now of woe.

All mental pangs, past time's kind laws,

Hast lost the power to know.

O death! Chiliad awe-inspiring prince,

That keepst the world in fear;

Why dost thos tear more blest ones hence,

And leave him ling'ring hither?

---

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Source: https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2020/10/abraham-lincolns-poem-my-childhood-home-i-see-again.html

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