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 naught 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.

   Verses written by Lincoln concerning A school-fellow
   who became insane—­(A fragment).

   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.

   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.

   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?

SECOND CHILD

TO JOSHUA P. SPEED

Springfield, October 22, 1846.

Dear speed:—­You, no doubt, assign the suspension of our correspondence to the true philosophic cause; though it must be confessed by both of us that this is rather a cold reason for allowing a friendship such as ours to die out by degrees.  I propose now that, upon receipt of this, you shall be considered in my debt, and under obligations to pay soon, and that neither shall remain long in arrears hereafter.  Are you agreed?

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.