The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address | Page 5

not your letter now before me; but from memory, I think you ask
me who is the author of the piece I sent you, and that you do so ask as
to indicate a slight suspicion that I am the author. Beyond all question,
I am not the author. 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. I met it in a straggling
newspaper last summer, and I remember to have seen it once before,
about fifteen years ago, and this is all I know about it.

The statement that he first had seen the poem about fifteen years before
1846--that is, about 1831--carries his acquaintance with it back to the
period of his friendship for Ann Rutledge, and it is not at all
improbable that she learned it at the same time.
After Lincoln had become President, he is said to have made one or
more copies of this poem for personal friends; but I have not seen any
of these copies. It would be interesting to know whether he ever knew
the whole poem.
Literary critics have not shared his high estimate of the composition. In
general they have esteemed it a rather mediocre piece. But its rhythm is
accurate, and its rhyme is good, and its plaintive sentiment accorded
with the melancholy of Lincoln and of his social environment. It is not
the only poem of no great literary merit which became popular in that
period; and it would have been forgotten with the rest but for the
association of its lines with the name of Abraham Lincoln. He gave to
it and its author their chief claim to immortality.
During his Presidency, Lincoln said:
There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for years,
which was first shown me when a young man, by a friend, and which I
afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper and learned by heart. I would
give a good deal to know who wrote it, but I have never been able to
ascertain.
The author of the poem, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be
proud?" was William Knox, who was born at Firth, in the parish of
Lilliesleaf, in the county of Roxburghshire, in Scotland, on the 17th of
August, 1789, and who died at the age of thirty-six. From his early
childhood he wrote verses, and he attained sufficient prominence to win
the attention of Walter Scott, who encouraged him and loaned him
money. What he might have done had he lived, we do not know; but
this is the only poem of his that has any claim to distinction, and that
not for its own outstanding merit, but for its association with Abraham
Lincoln.

Knox's earliest volume, "The Harp of Zion," was published in 1825,
and does not contain this poem. What appears to have been an inclusive
volume of the poems of Knox was published in London and Edinburgh
in 1847, and bore the title "The Lonely Hearth, The Songs of Israel,
Harp of Zion, and Other Poems." This includes the poem which bears
the title "Mortality." It is interesting to recall that it has sometimes been
printed with the title "Immortality." To that title, however, it can bear
no claim.
It will be of interest to compare the poem in its entirety with the stanzas
which Lincoln quoted on the occasion of his oration in memory of the
deceased President, General Zachary Taylor.

MORTALITY
BY WILLIAM KNOX
Oh, 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,
Man 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 blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Shone beauty
and pleasure,--her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who
loved her and praised, Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
The hand of the king that the sceptre 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.

The peasant whose lot was to saw and to reap; The herdsman who
climbed with his goats up the steep; The beggar who wandered