The evening of March 25th was an intensely interesting one to me.
It was passed with the President alone in his study, marked by no
interruptions. Busy with pen and papers when I entered, he presently
threw them aside, and commenced talking again about Shakspeare. Little
Tad coming in, he sent him to the library for a copy of the plays, from
which he read aloud several of his favorite passages. Relapsing into a
sadder strain, 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?” Surprised and delighted, I told
him that I should greatly prize a copy of the lines. He replied that he
had recently written them out for Mrs. Stanton, but promised that when
a favorable opportunity occurred he would give them to me.
Varying the subject, he continued: “There are some quaint, queer
verses, written, I think, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled, ‘The Last
Leaf,’ one of which is to me inexpressibly touching. He then repeated
these also from memory. The verse he referred to occurs in about the
middle of the poem, and is this:--
“The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.”
As he finished this verse, he said, in his emphatic way, “For pure
pathos, in my judgment, there is nothing finer than those six lines in
the English language!”
A day or two afterward, he asked me to accompany him to the temporary
studio, at the Treasury Department, of Mr. Swayne, the sculptor, who
was making a bust of him. While he was sitting, it occurred to me to
improve the opportunity to secure the promised poem. Upon mentioning
the subject, the sculptor surprised me by saying that he had at his
home, in Philadelphia, a printed copy of the verses, taken from a
newspaper some years previous. The President inquired if they were
published in any connection with his name. Mr. Swayne said that they
purported to have been _written_ “by Abraham Lincoln.” “I have heard
of that before, and that is why I asked,” returned the President. “But
there is no truth in it. The poem was first shown to me by a young man
named ‘Jason Duncan,’ many years ago.”
The sculptor was using for a studio the office of the Solicitor of
the Treasury Department, an irregular room, packed nearly full of law
books. Seating myself, I believe, upon a pile of these at Mr. Lincoln’s
feet, he kindly repeated the lines, which I wrote down, one by one, as
they fell from his lips:--