LINCOLN AS A VERSE WRITER.
Even when he was a boy Lincoln was sometimes called upon to write poetry. The following are among his earliest attempts at rhyme:
Good boys who to their books apply,
Will all be great men by and by.
It is needless to say that Lincoln himself carried out what he wrote so well; in other words, he “practiced what he preached.” It was in a great measure owing to his constant application to his books that he afterward became a great man.
The following poem Mr. Lincoln wrote in 1844, while on a visit to the home of his childhood:
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.
Oh, 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 earthy vile,
Seems hallowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle,
All bathed in liquid light.