My Childhood Home I See Again Poem by Abraham Lincoln

My Childhood Home I See Again

Rating: 3.6


I

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.

O 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 earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but 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, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

II

But here's an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,
A fortune-favored child--
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man 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 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 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 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 it's strains, I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Air held his breath; trees, with the spell,
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past; 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 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 thos tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him ling'ring here?

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Michael Gale 05 October 2006

In civil war of brother against brother... There came a man in bearded face to slavery wanted erase. In times of war of mother country in history man takes his violent place... Of man's own violent ways he cannot ever face. Freedom of man is his own precise... That factual fact he must come to realize. War of man is a maddening disease... Still the fact that needs to cease. Ole Abe Lincoln fed the flames of freedom's train... Equality of woman and man should forever on our heads to fall and rain. I cannot understand no one not has commented on this poem. Oh well. This was a nice poem. God bless all poets-May they be Presidents or even civilians-MJG.

12 5 Reply
Fabrizio Frosini 11 December 2015

the 1st part is also in the previous page.. with a different title..

8 5 Reply
James Mclain 22 September 2015

To think his life was snuffed out by one whom'd act each day about one turn upon each day and night would come again to one so vile.. iip

3 3 Reply
George Herquet 13 June 2014

I read an edited version of this someplace; there was nothing about Matthew, but there was a comment about the field he walked upon being a part of him; that it had formed his blood and bones.

3 2 Reply
MAHTAB BANGALEE 20 January 2021

great poem; just nostalgic reminiscent and inspiring..

0 0 Reply
Richard Antwi 21 June 2020

The first stanza of this poem encourages me that atleast, I have something in common with a very prominent leader. ...love it!

0 0 Reply
Malemnganba 08 January 2018

The of the lincon

5 1 Reply
Madhabi Banerjee 23 April 2017

I AM JUST SPELL BOUND.

5 2 Reply
Steve Park 14 November 2016

I didn't actually realize he was a literary genius as well as a skilled politician. This man really had a way with words and a deeper understanding of ART.

9 2 Reply
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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Sinking Spring Farm, Kentucky
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