[FRIEND JOHNSTON:] You remember when I wrote you from Tremont last spring, sending you a little canto of what I called poetry, I promised to bore you with another some time. I now fulfil the promise. The subject of the present one is an insane man; his name is Matthew Gentry. He is three years older than I, and when we were boys we went to school together. He was rather a bright lad, and the son of the rich man of a very [top] poor neighborhood. At the age of nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity. When, as I told you in my other letter, I visited my old home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood, I could not forget the impression his case made upon me. Here is the result:
| [But here's an object more of dread] Than aught the grave contains— A human form with reason fled, While wretched life remains. When terror spread, and neighbors ran Your dangerous strength to bind, And soon, a howling, crazy man, Your limbs were fast confined; How then you strove and shrieked aloud, Your bones and sinews bared; And fiendish on the gazing crowd With burning eyeballs glared; And begged and swore, and wept and prayed, With maniac laughter joined; How fearful were these signs displayed By pangs that killed the mind! And when at length the drear and long Time soothed thy fiercer woes, How plaintively thy 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. To drink its strains I've stole away, All stealthily and still, Ere yet the rising god of day Had streaked the eastern hill. Air held her breath; trees with the spell Seemed sorrowing angels round, Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell Upon the listening ground. But this is past, and naught remains That raised thee o'er the brute: Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strains Are like, forever mute. [top] 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. O death! thou awe-inspiring prince That keepst the world in fear, Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence, And leave him lingering here? |
If I should ever send another, the subject will be a "Bear Hunt."
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
The poem alluded to in the first letter is undoubtedly "Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?", by William Knox, a Scottish poet, known to fame only by its authorship. It remained the favorite of Lincoln until his death, being frequently alluded to by him in conversation with his friends. Because it so aptly presents Lincoln's own spirit it is here presented in full. During his Presidency he said:
"There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for years, which was first shown me when a young man by a friend, and which I afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper and learned by heart. I would give a good deal to know who wrote it, but I have never been able to ascertain."
Then, half closing his eyes, he repeated the verses:
[OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?]
By William Knox.