Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House

“ [59] 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.”