RPO -- Abraham Lincoln : My Childhood's Home I See Again

1] Lincoln attached the complete poem in a letter written from Springfield, Illinois, on February 24, 1846, to Andrew Johnston, and revised versions of the first division or canto of it in two other letters to Johnston, one from Tremont on April 18, and the other from Springfield on September 26. Lincoln recounted the occasion of the poem to Johnston as follows: "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" (Works, I, 378). Substantive variants between the two versions are noted here. The letter of April 18 establishes the extent of canto 1. The second canto appeared in the letter of September 6. Possibly "The Bear Hunt" was intended as the third canto. childhood's home: childhood-home (Feb. 1846).

45] Lincoln introduced the second canto to Johnston in his letter of September 6 as follows: "The subject of the present one [canto] 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 our very poor neighbourhood. 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 impressions his case made upon me" (Works, I, 384-85).

89] This stanza is only in Lincoln's revised version and was likely meant to replace the following two stanzas, which close the poem in its first version:

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, I, ed. Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953): 367-70, 378-79, 385-86. E 457 .91 Robarts Library
First publication date: 5 May 1847
Publication date note: Published first by Andrew Johnston with Lincoln's permission, but without author attribution, May 5, 1847, in the Quincy Whig (Works, I, 385, 392), with the title "The Return" and subdivisions named "Part I -- Reflection" and "Part II -- The Maniac".
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2003
Recent editing: 1:2003/6/1*1:2003/6/1

Composition date: 1846
Form: quatrains
Rhyme: abab

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

My Childhood's Home I See Again