ut 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.

We have another boy, born the 10th of March. He is very much such a child
as Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order. Bob is "short and low,"
and I expect always will be. He talks very plainly,--almost as plainly as
anybody. He is quite smart enough. I sometimes fear that he is one of the
litt