A poem by
Abraham Lincoln:.
The Deserted Village
Abraham Lincoln, 1844
My childhood home I see again
And gladden with the view,
And still the memories crowd my brain
There's sadness in it too.
O memory, thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where loved ones lost and things decayed
In dreamy shadows rise,
And freed from all things gross and vile,
Seem hallowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes of some enchanted isle,
All bathed in liquid light.
And distant mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day, --
As bugle notes, 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.
Now twenty years have passed away
Since here I bayed farewell
To woods and fields and scenes of play
And schoolmates loved so well.
Where many were, how few remain
Of old familiar things,
But seeing these, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.
I hear the lone survivors tell,
How naught from death could save,
Till every sound seems like 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 their tombs!
Abraham Lincoln wrote a a fair number of poems, but I don't really think all that much of them. If anyone wants me to node more of them, let me know.