{"id":1112,"date":"2013-06-29T13:12:34","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T13:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2016-08-18T14:37:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T14:37:36","slug":"letter-to-andrew-johnston-with-poem-april-18-1846","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/letter-to-andrew-johnston-with-poem-april-18-1846\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to Andrew Johnston With Poem (April 18, 1846)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contributing Editors for this page include Todd Jansson<\/em><\/p>\n

Ranking<\/strong><\/h3>\n

#134<\/span> on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents<\/em><\/p>\n

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n
“My childhood’s home I see again, \u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n
And sadden with the view;<\/a><\/div>\n
And still, as memory crowds my brain,<\/a><\/div>\n
There’s pleasure in it too.”<\/a><\/div>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

HD Daily Report, April 18, 1846<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, April 18, 1846<\/a><\/p>\n

Close Readings<\/h3>\n

Todd Jansson, Understanding Lincoln blog post (via Genius), 2016<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Map<\/h3>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
\nView in Larger Map<\/a><\/p>\n

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

\u201cIn Indiana Lincoln was home again. Even as he stumped politically, he was thinking poetically. \u201cThat part of the country,\u201d he later wrote a friend, \u201cis within itself, as unpoetical as any spot of the earth; but still, seeing and its objects and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

— John C. Waugh,\u00a0One Man Was Great Enough: Abraham Lincoln’s Road to the Civil War<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Boston: Houghton Miffin Harcourt, 2007).<\/p>\n

“He preferred such lugubrious woks as the poem \u201cMortality\u201d by William Knox. \u2018I would give all I am worth, and go into debt, to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is,\u2019 he said in 1846. Lawrence Weldon observed him, at day\u2019s end on the circuit, sit \u2018by the decaying embers of an old-fashioned fire-place\u2019 and \u2018quote at length\u2019 from \u2018Mortality.\u2019 He told friends that Knox\u2019s verses \u2018sounded to him as much like true poetry as anything he had ever heard.\u2019 Evidently he first made its acquaintance in New Salem but came to love it intensely after visiting southwestern Indiana during the 1844 presidential campaign. He described that trip as a visit to \u201cthe neighborhood in that State where I was raised, where my mother and only sister were buried, and from which I have been absent about fifteen years.\u201d<\/p>\n

—Michael Burlingame,\u00a0The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 108.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTE TO READERS<\/h3>\n

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new \u201cUnderstanding Lincoln\u201d online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Searchable Text<\/span><\/h3>\n
Tremont, April 18, 1846.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Friend Johnston:\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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.”<\/span><\/div>\n
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 circumstances. 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 subjects divided the thing into four little divisions or cantos, the first only of which I send you now and may send the others hereafter.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Yours truly,<\/span><\/div>\n
A. LINCOLN.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
My childhood’s home I see again, \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
And sadden with the view;<\/span><\/div>\n
And still, as memory crowds my brain,<\/span><\/div>\n
There’s pleasure in it too.<\/span><\/div>\n
O Memory! thou midway world<\/span><\/div>\n
‘Twixt earth and paradise,<\/span><\/div>\n
Where things decayed and loved ones lost<\/span><\/div>\n
In dreamy shadows rise,<\/span><\/div>\n
And, freed from all that’s earthly vile,<\/span><\/div>\n
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,<\/span><\/div>\n
Like scenes in some enchanted isle<\/span><\/div>\n
All bathed in liquid light.<\/span><\/div>\n
As dusky mountains please the eye<\/span><\/div>\n
When twilight chases day;<\/span><\/div>\n
As bugle-notes that, passing by,<\/span><\/div>\n
In distance die away;<\/span><\/div>\n
As leaving some grand waterfall,<\/span><\/div>\n
We, lingering, list its roar—<\/span><\/div>\n
So memory will hallow all<\/span><\/div>\n
We’ve known, but know no more.<\/span><\/div>\n
Near twenty years have passed away<\/span><\/div>\n
Since here I bid farewell<\/span><\/div>\n
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,<\/span><\/div>\n
And playmates loved so well.<\/span><\/div>\n
Where many were, but few remain<\/span><\/div>\n
Of old familiar things;<\/span><\/div>\n
But seeing them, to mind again<\/span><\/div>\n
The lost and absent brings.<\/span><\/div>\n
The friends I left that parting day,<\/span><\/div>\n
How changed, as time has sped!<\/span><\/div>\n
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,<\/span><\/div>\n
And half of all are dead.<\/span><\/div>\n
I hear the loved survivors tell<\/span><\/div>\n
How nought from death could save,<\/span><\/div>\n
Till every sound appears a knell,<\/span><\/div>\n
And every spot a grave.<\/span><\/div>\n
I range the fields with pensive tread,<\/span><\/div>\n
And pace the hollow rooms,<\/span><\/div>\n
And feel (companion of the dead)<\/span><\/div>\n
I’m living in the tombs.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contributing Editors for this page include Todd Jansson Ranking #134 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript “My childhood’s home I see again, \u00a0 And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There’s pleasure in it too.” On This Date HD Daily Report, April 18, 1846 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10855],"tags":[10866,10881,6088,11663,11629,11669,10865],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-railsplitter","tag-antebellum","tag-autobiographical","tag-letter","tag-literary","tag-melancholy","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-private"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4564,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/4564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}