Grave of James Rutledge, father of Ann

[RJNorton]

(11-05-2015 04:44 AM)maharba Wrote:  That was 1838. Was there an actual suicide locally or nationally that Lincoln or another author/poet could have heard about or based this upon? Nothing is going to match 'global suicide method' in the poem. But, in addition to his chronic sorrow and the early deaths of his own relatives from natural causes, might he have heard of an actual suicide maybe in one of those Louisville or other papers he was fond of reading?

maharba, IMO anything is possible. There are a lot of unknowns regarding this poem. Personally I have not read of any actual suicide which may have led to Lincoln writing this poem (if he did). Still it is possible Lincoln was effected by a real suicide just as the apparent lunacy of his youthful friend, Matthew Gentry, led to Lincoln writing some lines about Gentry in the mid-1840's:

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But here's an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,
A fortune-favored child--
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man wild.

Poor Matthew! I have ne'er forgot,
When first, with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
And mother strove to kill;

When terror spread, and neighbors ran,
Your dange'rous strength to bind;
And soon, a howling crazy man
Your limbs were fast confined.

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd,
With burning eye-balls glared--

And begged, and swore, and wept and prayed
With maniac laught[ter?] joined--
How fearful were those signs displayed
By pangs that killed thy mind!

And when at length, tho' drear and long,
Time smoothed 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.

To drink it's strains, I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Air held his breath; trees, with the spell,
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past; and nought 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 thos tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him ling'ring here?