Abraham Lincoln’s Indiana and the Spirit of Mortal Douglas L. Wilson’” Abraham Lincoln was fond of poetry. As a young man, he memorized and recited the best-known poems of Robert Burns, ad- mired Lord Byron, and cultivated a taste for William Shakespeare that would last throughout his life. Perhaps more than any other president, the self-educated Lincoln invoked his familiarity with English verse, particularly the plays of Shakespeare, as a means of dealing with the pressures and burdens of office. But his favorite poem, which he would recite alongside passages from Hamlet, was so obscure that until the last months of his life he never knew it in an authoritative text or even knew the name of its author. “Mortality” by the Scottish poet William Knox is better known by its first line, “0 why should the spirit of mortal be proud?’ but it is safe to say it is only known or remembered at all in associa- tion with Abraham Lincoln. This was true even in Lincoln’s life- time, when he was himself sometimes identified as the poem’s author, an attribution he found flattering. “Beyond all question, I am not the author,” he wrote to a correspondent. “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.”1 Judging by the number of times he is reported to have praised it, recited it, and dictated or copied it out for friends during the last twenty years of his life, it seems reasonable to con- clude with David C. Mearns that this obscure poem “had a special meaning for Abraham Lincoln.”2 * Douglas L. Wilson is professor of English and director of the library, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. He has written on Jefferson’s library and literary in- terests, and more recently, on Jefferson and Lincoln as readers. He is currently editing, with Rodney 0. Davis, the letters and interviews of William H. Herndon’s Lincoln informants. 1 Abraham Lincoln to Andrew Johnston, April 18, 1846, in The Collected Works ofAbraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (9 vols., New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), I, 378. David C. Mearns, “ ‘The Great Invention of the World’: Mr. Lincoln and the Books he Read,” in Three Presidents and Their Books: The Reading of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Rooseuelt, by Arthur Bestor, David C. Mearns, and Jona- than Daniels (Urbana, Ill., 1955), 83. INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, LXXXVII (June, 1991). * 1991, Trustees of Indiana University. 156 Indiana Magazine of History Lincoln’s recitation of “Mortality” must have been extremely effective, to judge by the reactions of witnesses. One of the most revealing accounts is provided by Francis B. Carpenter, who en- gaged Lincoln in literary conversation while painting his portrait in the White House. Carpenter described an evening spent with Lincoln in his study, where the president began talking about Shakespeare and then read several of his favorite passages, some- thing he did often and with great effect. “Relapsing into a sadder strain,” Carpenter wrote, “he laid the book aside, and leaning back in his chair, said, ‘There is a poem that has been a great favorite with me for years, to which my attention was first called when a young man, by a friend, and which I afterward saw and cut from a newspaper, and carried in my pocket, till by frequent reading I had it by heart. I would give a great deal,’ he added, ‘to know who wrote it, but I never could ascertain.’ Then, half closing his eyes, he repeated the poem, ‘Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?’ ”3 Carpenter’s reaction was typical of Lincoln’s listeners: he was surprised and delighted, and he asked for a copy of the text. Unlike the special meaning of “Mortality” for Abraham Lin- coln, the poem’s meanings are not at all obscure. Its basic theme- that life is fleeting and death inevitable-is modulated in each of its fourteen quatrains and is accented by the framing question of the first and last lines: 0 why should the spirit of mortal be proud! Like a swift flying meteor-a fast flying cloud- A flash of the lightning-a break of the wave, He passeth from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the Oak, and the Willow shall fade, Be scattered around, and together be laid. And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie. The infant a mother attended and loved- The mother that infant’s affection who proved The husband that mother and infant who blest, Each-all are away to their dwellings of rest. The maid on whose brow, on whose cheek, in whose eye Shone beauty and pleasure-her triumphs are by; And alike from the memory of the living erased And the memory of mortals, who loved her and praised- The hand of the King, that the scepter hath borne, The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn, The eye of the Sage, and the heart of the Brave, Are hidden, and lost in the depth of the grave- F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York, 18661, 58. Spirit of Mortal 157 The saint who enjoyed the communion of Heaven, The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven; The wise and the foolish, the gentle and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap. The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep, The beggar who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread. So the multitude goes like the flower or weed, That withers away to let other succeed, So the multitude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told. For we are the same our fathers have been, We see the same sights our fathers have seen, We drink the same stream, and view the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run- The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think, From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging they also would cling, But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing- They loved, but the story we can not unfold, The scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold, They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come, They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb- They died! Aye, they died. We things that are now- That walk on the turf that lies over their brow, And make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sun shine and rain- And the smile, and the tear, and the song, and the dirge, Still follow each other like surge upon surge- Tis the wink of an eye, tis the draught of a breath From the blossom of health to the paleness of death- From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud- 0 why should the spirit of mortal be proud?4 4 The text cited here is that written out by Lincoln in 1849 for Lois E. Newhall and is transcribed from the photographic reproduction in Maurice Boyd, William Knox and Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Poetic Legacy (Denver, 1966), xiv-xvii. This version differs slightly from the authoritative text of the poem in the ex- tremely rare collected edition of Knox’s poetry (1847), which is reproduced in Boyd. Another version in Lincoln’s hand, written out for Ellen M. Hutchison Stanton dur- ing Lincoln’s presidency and reproduced by Boyd, is lacking stanza 7; the version dictated to Francis B. Carpenter lacked stanzas 4 and 7. The earliest known Lincoln version, dictated to his law clerk Gibson Harris between 1845 and 1847, is in the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield. 158 Indiana Magazine of History THEINDIANA ABRAHAM LINCOLN MOVEDTO As A BOY OF EIGHT HE LATERDESCRIBED As “AN UNBROKENFOREST.” REVISITING THE SCENEMANY YEARS LATER, HE WROTE: “THATPART OF THE COUNTRYIs, WITHIN ITSELF, As UNPOETICALAS ANY SPOT OF THE EARTH;BUT STILL, SEEING IT AND ITS OBJECTSAND INHABITANTS AROUSEDFEELINGS IN ME WHICH WERECERTAINLY POETRY.” Engravings throughout text reproduced from William Knox, Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud‘ (Boston, 1877), n p , collections of Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington Intended by the poet as a recapitulation of the third chapter of Job and the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, its Old Testament fatalism is unremitting and notably unrelieved by any suggestion of an after- life. The fate of humankind-low or high, young or old-is that of the leaves: both “shall moulder to dust.” Human joy and grief, love and scorn, are all mere repetitions of one’s forebears and come to nothing. The predominant fact of life is death. Pride in so tran- sient a thing as a mortal is obviously misplaced. There can be little doubt that there was a connection between Lincoln’s affinity for “Mortality” and his recurrent melancholy. In- deed, one of the most conspicuous features of Lincoln’s personal demeanor was his frequent lapses into moods of profound depres- sion. He seems to have been subject to these spells from an early date, though he probably attempted to disguise them at first.