Wisdom's there for youth to get

When Edward Sandford Martin was invited to speak at the Harvard Club dinner in New York, everyone should have expected something fun and witty. A founder of the Harvard Lampoon, Martin's humor was celebrated even before his graduation from Harvard in 1877. Standing before his fellow alumni on January 31, 1908, Martin presented his poem "What For?" — a spirited though genuine poem about the student experience there:

What do we go to Harvard for?
What is it all about?
Our fathers knew of something there
They thought it worth our while to share;
Something we think our boys can't spare,
So they go, too; and all the more
The riddle presses "What's it for?"
What's in Harvard that men misdoubt
'Twere futile thrift to do without?

Wisdom's there for youth to get:
Follies galore to do.
Did ever youth learn wisdom yet
But glanced at Folly too?
Between the covers of books
Stands knowledge in noble store,
But it's not all there; it's everywhere:
And to learn to know its looks,
And find, and use it more and more,
Is what we go to Harvard for.

To get in touch with many men,
And to get close up to a few:
To make wise marks with a doubtful pen;
And to guess, and have it come true.
To learn to make food and drink
With labor and mirth agree;
To learn to live, and learn to think;
And to learn to be happy though free—

These at Harvard seek our Youth,
Nor in their seeking fail.
And they gain betimes the vision of truth;
And they play some games with Yale.
If they don't 'most always win,
The reason 's easily shown;
The board at home's so rich in fare
They can't get hungry enough to care
With due concern and enough despair,
Who gets contention's bone.

William Gilmore Simms: no mother's smile

William Gilmore Simms was three months shy of his second birthday when his mother, Harriet Singleton Simms, died in childbirth on January 29, 1808. The young Simms had lost his older brother shortly before. His father (and namesake) was immensely depressed and, it is said, his hair turned completely white within a week. Calling his home "a place of tombs," he moved to Tennessee then Mississippi, leaving his son (the only surviving child) with his maternal grandmother Jane Gates in Charleston, South Carolina. Father was seldom heard from.

As one of his earliest biographers noted, William Gilmore Simms grew up "motherless and almost fatherless," but he doted on his grandmother, who returned his warm affection and was known as a great storyteller. Attempts at a public school education failed; in his adulthood, Simms reflected that he was an example of the "worthlessness" of Charleston schools at the time: "They taught me little or nothing. The teachers were generally worthless in morals, and as ignorant as worthless." Frequent illness kept him from attending class often anyway and, instead, he turned to reading and self-education.

As a teenager, however, he learned of an inheritance from his mother's estate, which he quickly put towards the purchase of a political newspaper. It soon failed. He married young, but his wife died shortly into the marriage. He visited his father in Mississippi, and the elder Simms told the younger he would never be successful in South Carolina.

Throughout it all, William Gilmore Simms was writing as early as 8 years old. At one point, he traveled to Hingham, Massachusetts, where he completed his long, ambitious poem Atalantis; its publication was his first major literary success. He became one of the most prolific writers of the South, publishing poetry, novels, history, and editing anthologies after the Civil War. Looking back on his early years in a letter to Rufus Griswold in 1841, Simms wrote: "Of myself, in this time, the history is no pleasant one to me." His sonnet "Childhood":

That season which all other men regret,
     And strive, with boyish longing, to recall,
Which love permits not memory to forget,
     And fancy still restores in dreams of all
That boyhood worshipp'd, or believed, or knew,—
Brings no sweet images to me—was true,
Only in cold and cloud, in lonely days
     And gloomy fancies—in defrauded claims,
     Defeated hopes, denied, denying aims;—
Cheer'd by no promise—lighted by no rays,
Warm'd by no smile—no mother's smile,—that smile,
Of all, best suited sorrow to beguil,
And strengthen hope, and, by unmark'd degrees,
Encourage to their birth high purposes.

Clodfelter: farewell, on earth, farewell

"I suppose it is natural for every parent to weep for his child," wrote Indiana poet Noah J. Clodfelter in a footnote, "but the ties that bound me to this little one certainly were strong, and if I were foolishly attached, it is a weakness for which I am innocently to be pitied." Clodfelter's son Byron (named after the poet) had died on January 27, 1879 at the age of 3 years, 7 months, and 28 days (as the mourning father meticulously recorded). "If there is any affection stronger than parental affection, I hope to never be fully acquainted with it." Clodfelter's poem "In Memoria" is dedicated to Byron and was written within 20 days after the boy's death:

Our home is sad since death came there,
               And bore our brilliant star away,
Our pride, our joy, our constant care,
               The hope of our declining day.

I weep, we weep, I know not why,
               But still we weep with hope and love,
Yet knowing, as I know, to die
               Is but to live with God above.

What hope, Oh, glorious hope, to think,
               Upon the river's golden side
Our friends stand waiting on the brink,
               To welcome us beyond its tide.

Methinks I see my little boy,
               With hands extended to me now,
As if in ecstacy of joy,
               To press fond kisses on my brow.

The narrative voice of the poem, Clodfelter himself, notes that time might "efface to some degree" the sadness felt by the boys' parents, but notes in particular that the branch torn from the [family] tree is particularly sorrowful. For now, their thoughts center on the lost child who "breathes" in "all things 'round us," particularly the vacant chair which Clodfelter sees rocking in his dreams. They conclude, however, that he was "too pure and fair for earth." The thought of reuniting in heaven gives him a bit of a boost:

A bleak cold world 'twould be indeed,
               If I but tho't I'd never meet
My little child — my heart would bleed
               Until its pulses ceased to beat.

I have an interest now in heaven,
               I never felt I had before,
And have had since that fatal even,
               That death came thro' our chamber door

But little Byron e'er will dwell
               Within our spirits, O, how true,
We can but say on earth farewell,
                But then 'tis sad this short adieu.

But now farewell, on earth, farewell,
               My little boy, farewell to you,
Soon will I go to thee and dwell,
               And there forget this sad adieu.

Cawein to Riley: recognition of your genius

"Dear old boy," began Madison Cawein's telegram to James Whitcomb Riley, dated, January 25, 1912:

I want to be the first to congratulate you on receiving the gold medal for poetry. Great enthusiasm at Institute dinner over the award. Am proud of you over this national recognition of your genius.

The award in question was from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an organization which Riley joined in 1908. Cawein was in attendance at that dinner, not because he had any hope of receiving the award but, as he wrote, "I want to be present on that occasion and see to whom the gold medal is to be presented." Cawein and the other voting members selected Riley unanimously. Riley himself, however, was not present; only two years before his award, Riley suffered a debilitating stroke that left him without the full use of his writing hand, but also in a deep depression. He was also still battling his alcoholism. But the very public admiration was a bit of a boost to him, and 1912 became an important year for the "Hoosier Poet."

He was asked, for example, to record himself reading some of his poems. By October of that year, the governor of Indiana declared Riley's birthday as Riley Day, and schools celebrated his poetry that day. In that year, he also re-published Rhymes of Childhood, which became his highest selling book. By 1913, he returned to public appearances with the aid of a cane.

Cawein wrote to a friend that Riley's gold medal was "the crown for his life work." He admitted that Riley should "feel proud of that medal, as doubtless he does, and should now be content to die, as perhaps he is." The year 1912 proved less fortunate for the Kentuckian poet Madison Cawein, however. His financial situation suffered miserably from the stock market crash, though he also began writing some of his most ambitious poems. Two years later, he was added to the relief list of the Authors Club before he died in 1914. Riley joined him in death two years later.

Bierce: that is a law of nature

Ambrose Bierce had a lifelong fascination, perhaps even an obsession, with war. "Every generation must have its war; that is a law of nature," as he wrote in the January 23, 1886 issue of the Wasp, a publication for which he was editor-in-chief. Bierce had served in the Union Army during the Civil War (he fought at Shiloh, among other places) and,at the end of his life, went to Mexico to observe battles there before disappearing forever.

For Bierce, however, glorification of war through stories from old soldiers was inappropriate and misleading. The genre of war memoirs, both in long and short form, had become a dominant part of literary culture, though Bierce distrusted these accounts, noting that "hardly one has been free from lying." By that, he did not mean merely exaggerating the truth for dramatic effect. As he wrote: "most of them talk pretty well, [but] many didn't fight." The growth of these stories, he wrote, "threatens to swallow up every other industry in the country."

These battle yarns, indeed, are nursing a bably [i.e. babbly] war, which now lies mouthing its fat knuckles and marking time with its pinky feet, in a cradle of young imaginations, but in another decade it will be striding through the land in seven-league boots, chewing soap.

Bierce's own writings also reflect on war, most notably his short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Killed at Resaca." Perhaps, more tellingly, he including the following definition of "war" in his tongue-in-cheek Devil's Dictionary:

WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity. The student of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself inaccessible to the light. "In time of peace prepare for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things earthly have an end — that change is the one immutable and eternal law — but that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination and growth... Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.

*This post was inspired in part by Donald T. Blume's Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study (Kent State University Press, 2004).

The literary influences of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The universe hangs on moral foundations...There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." There is something which justifies James Russell Lowell in saying, "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future.

Martin Luther King, Jr. used these lines in his essay, "Going Forward by Going Backward," in April 1954, but he often reused the sentiment and the quotes. He references Bryant's 1839 poem "The Battlefield" and Lowell's 1844 poem "The Present Crisis." King frequently quoted Lowell in particular, including lines like "Beyond the dim unknown God keeps watch over His own."

In the 1840s, Lowell was at his strongest as an advocate for civil rights, particularly in the abolition of slavery in the United States. His poem, "The Present Crisis," remains recognized one of his greatest works and its title was later adopted for the official magazine of the NAACP (the name was chosen with its first issue in 1910, edited by W. E. B. DuBois). Elsewhere, Dr. King quoted from Lowell's equally powerful "Stanzas on Freedom": "They are slaves who fear to speak / For the fallen and the weak." As he said in 1954:

These words from the pen of James Russell Lowell are quite expressive of all that I intend to say this morning. Usually we think of slavery in the physical sense, as an institution inflicted on one group of people by another group. But there is another type of slavery which is probably more prevalent and certainly more injurious than physical bondage, namely mental slavery.

Among his other inspirations, Dr. King also often cited Henry David Thoreau and, in particular, Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience." In his autobiography, he refers to first reading that essay as a college freshmen:

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" for the first time. Here, in that courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance... I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.

*For this post, I am particularly indebted to an edition of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. VI: "Advocate of the Social Gospel" (University of California Press, 2007), Clayborne Carson, senior editor.

Lucas on Lee: Lie still in glory!

Though Robert E. Lee had died in October 1870, Virginia poet Daniel Bedinger Lucas did not write his poem to the former General of the Confederate Army until January 19, 1871 — the day on which Lee would have celebrated his 64th birthday. The three part, 110-line poem "The Death of Lee" praises Lee as "the greatest man," "the greatest spirit," both in war and in peace, and finally as a paragon. Lucas seemed particularly pleased that Lee had died in the "autumn" of his life, "ere age could tame" him.

In the poem, Lee's role as a general portrays him as an underdog ("twice baptized in blood"), struggling with firm resolve against a superior foe, though accepting his victories with modesty ("Then, from the summit smiled on those who stood / Below, and simply said, 'I did the best I could!'"). However, both in success and in defeat, Lee held one major trait which Lucas praised:

Success, defeat, a truer meaning have:
   'Tis Virtue dominates eternally.
'Tis Virtue makes the freeman or the slave,
   From whose green heights of wingless victory,
Our hero, conquered—only shone the more,
As, half-eclipsed, the moon burns ruddier than before!

Those who were more literally enslaved might quibble with Lucas somewhat, the poem is more focused on Lee's character than his accomplishments. He "clamored not for rank nor place," was never envious, never "betrayed a friend, nor laid a rival low." He was never vindictive, never loved war, and hid a tenderness in his heart. Because in his life he was so simple, so down to earth, Lucas writes, "we magnify him dead!" Whether true or not, the poem leaves Lee without fault in his whole life (though Lucas opens a window for a potential rising of the Confederacy, in which the spirit of Lee will return and lead the new war):

Lie still in glory! hero of our hearts,
   Sleep sweetly in thy vaulted chapel-grave!
The splendor of the far-excelling stars departs—
   Not so the lustre of the godlike brave!
Thy glory shall not vanish, but increase,
Thou boldest son of war, and mildest child of peace!

Lie still in glory! patient, prudent, deep!
   O, central form in our immortal strife,
With an eternal weight of glory, sleep
   Within her breast, who gave thee name and life!
Lie very still! no more contend with odds!
Transcendent among men—resplendent with the gods!

Lie still in glory! faithful, fervent, strong!
   Perchance the land we love shall need a name:
Perchance the breath of unresisted wrong
   Shall blow enduring patience into flame:
If so, thy name shall leap from star to star
In thunder, and thy sleeping army wake to war!

Birth of Franklin: our first-fruits

"Franklin the Printer" by Charles E. Mills (c. 1914), from Library of Congress

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on what today would be labeled January 17, 1706 (January 6, according to the Old Style). As one of the most colorful Founding Fathers, Franklin also had an exceptional literary career beginning before his teen years as an apprentice to his brother, a printer. At age 16, his first editorials were published under the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood (his brother printed these letters without knowing the author's identity at first).

Still a teenager, Franklin moved to Philadelphia and worked in print shops there. In 1728, he established his own publication, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and two years later he wrote the charter for what became the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1733, he began Poor Richard's Almanack Throughout all his other accomplishments — diplomat, inventor, scientist, postmaster, for example — he remained most fond of his role as a printer. His lengthiest work as an author is his autobiography, inspired originally as a letter to his son. In that book, he describes setting up his print shop in Philadelphia (and the alleged state of the city) after returning from London:

We had not been long returned to Philadelphia before the new types arrived from London... We had scarce opened our letters and put our press in order, before George House, an acquaintance of mine, brought a countryman to us, whom he had met in the street inquiring for a printer. All our cash was now expended in the variety of particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this countryman's five shillings, being our first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me more pleasure than any crown I have since earned; and the gratitude I felt toward House has made me often more ready than perhaps I should otherwise have been to assist young beginners.

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.

I am not in the imitation business

Mark Twain was not too happy to be accused of writing "a feeble imitation" of Bret Harte's poem "The Heathen Chinee" (published as "Plain Language from Truthful James" the previous year). He addressed his accuser, Thomas Bailey Aldrich of the Every Saturday in Boston, with a letter dated January 15, 1871. The actual parody poem, "The Three Aces: Jim Todd's Episode in Social Euchre," was about "a euchre game that was turned into a poker & a victim betrayed into betting his all on three aces when there was a 'flush' out against him," according to Twain. The poem had recently been published in a Buffalo newspaper, immediately drawing attention in New York and beyond. To Aldrich, he admitted he would never have written the "echo" of Harte, as he was accused:

I have had several applications from responsible publishing houses to furnish a volume of poems after the style of 'Truthful James' rhymes. I burned the letters without answering them, for I am not in the imitation business.

In fact, said Twain, the actual poet was "Hy Slocum" or "Carl Byng," both pseudonyms of Frank M. Thorn, who had been contributing to the Buffalo Express. Twain had been a part owner of that newspaper since 1869. After calling him a "plagiarist," Twain also vowed to make sure neither Byng nor Slocum (nor Thorn) was ever published in the Buffalo Express again.

Twain had second thoughts about sending such a cranky letter to Aldrich and only a few days later wrote him again, begging him not to publish the letter. By the time that request reached Aldrich, it was too late. 42,000 copies of the next issue of Every Saturday were already printed — including Twain's letter under the headline "Twain says he didn't do it." More than that, other newspapers began reprinting the works of "Hy Slocum" and "Carl Byng" as other pen names of Mark Twain. He was not bothered by it, however, and he and Aldrich continued their correspondence and, eventually, became good friends.

Birth of Ethel Lynn: beyond the ink-clogged pen

Ethelinda Eliot was born on January 13, 1827 in Goshen, New York. She was a direct descendant of John Eliot, an educator and minister who was known as the "apostle" of the Native Americans, whom he converted to Christianity, after translating the Bible into the Massachusetts language in the 17th century. She originally wrote under the simplified name "Ethel Lynn" but, after her 1846 marriage, she went by the name Ethel Lynn Beers. She and her husband eventually moved to New Jersey.

The majority of her poems, short stories, and novellas were published in periodicals including the New York Ledger and Harper's, which she later collected in several books in her lifetime. Authorship of her most famous poem ("All Quiet Along the Potomac") came under dispute in her lifetime, but it was immensely popular and was set to music. Much of her work is domestic in nature, sentimental in style, and feature children or families. She uses nature scenes and, particularly, descriptions of flowers but she also writes about spirituality, using words like "the Unseen" or "Master" in reference to the deity. Her poem "A New Friend":

I did not know her yesterday,
     This gentle friend of mine;
There was no niche unfilled, I thought,
     Within this heart of mine.

To-day I know her; songs of mine
     Have spoken for me while unseen,
Stretching like spider lines wind-blown
     Our severed selves between.

When I have done my best she knew;
     When I have failed she cared, —
Looking beyond the ink-clogged pen,
     My unbreathed trials shared.

Ah! through this living type I guess
     How vanished ones may keep
Some busy distaff's subtle thread
     Unbroken, tho' I sleep.

And still I gladder grow to think
     Some souls I do not know
As yet may meet me by and by,
     And, loving me, yet tell me so.

For, after all, a critic's praise
     Or blame comes not so near
As gentle words from loving ones,
     Who hold some simple cadence dear.

For these I think thee, busy pen,
     With point to speak, and plume to bear
My greeting to these unknown friends
     I shall know some time — here or There.

Birth of Taylor: preposterous mementos

"If I were called upon to single out of my thirty years' recollections of Bayard Taylor," wrote Richard Henry Stoddard in his 1893 book Recollections, Personal and Literary, "the one above all others by which I should prefer to remember him, it would be the night on which we celebrated his fortieth birthday (January 11, 1865)."

By the age of 40, Taylor had already published about 10 books, had traveled throughout the United States, Europe, and beyond, outlived his first wife, remarried, built a home in Pennsylvania, and serve his country as a diplomat in Russia. To celebrate his birthday, Stoddard and others looked to the recent celebration of William Cullen Bryant's 70th birthday, the proceedings of which were printed in book form by the Century Club. "I resolved to burlesque that account," Stoddard recalled, and friends sought the "most absurdly appropriate (or inappropriate)" gifts and tokens to present as "preposterous mementos." Stoddard continues his account:

I imagined the decoration of Bayard Taylor's chambers, the gathering of his friends, and wrote letters of regret from those who could not be present, but who somehow happened to be present in spite of their letters. The reading of these missives and sundry copies of verse, and the bestowal of our mementos, provoked more furi than had ever before, or has ever since, distinguished our Taylor nights. It was not so much that they were comical in themselves (though they were) as that we were willing to fool and to be fooled to the top of our bent. The table was in a roar till long after midnight.

On January 11, 1825, 40 years before that party, Bayard Taylor was born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Though he was his parents' fourth child, he was the first to survive past infancy. Raised as a Quaker, he had been named after a Delaware senator, taking that man's last name as his first. As a boy, he already exhibited the need to explore which defined his adult life (and his writing career). But, as he clarified in his book At Home and Abroad (1859), it wasn't a desire merely to walk that inspired him:

In looking back to my childhood, I can recall no such instinct of perambulation; but on the contrary, the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting the circle of my horizon, I could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. I envied every bird that sat swinging upon the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weather-cock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon, was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy.

Rhodes: The surface of the moon

The first descriptions of the Lunarians, the native inhabitants of the moon, were described by a 9-year old boy named Johnny Palmer in San Francisco on January 9, 1876. "When fully grown," according to Johnny, "they resemble somewhat a chariot wheel, with four spokes, converging at the center or axle." The axle is the creature's head, which has four eyes, and the spokes are its limbs. They come in various colors — or races — including bright red, orange, and blue.

The surface of the moon is all hill and hollow. There are but few level spots, nor is there any water visible. The atmosphere is almost as refined and light as hydrogen gas. There is no fire visible, nor are there any volcanoes. Most of the time of the inhabitants seems to be spent in playing games of locomotion, spreading themselves into squares, circles, triangles, and other mathematical figures. They move always in vast crowds. No one or two are ever seen separated from the main bodies. The children also flock in herds, and seem to be all of one family. Individualism is unknown. They seem to spawn like herring or shad, or to be propagated like bees, from the queen, in myriads. Motion is their normal condition. The moment after a mathematical figure is formed, it is dissolved, and fresh combinations take place, like the atoms in a kaleidoscope. No other species of animal, bird, or being exist upon the illuminated face of the moon.

Johnny observes the moon, and other astronomical phenomena, without the use of any scientific equipment. Due to a malformed eye (it is almost flat), he can only see things which are at least 240,000 miles away. He has no vision of objects closer and, because of this, his parents assumed he was blind. The truth was discovered by a committee of scientists sent from the California College of Scientists.

A little over a month after these experiments, a journalist (the narrator of the story) pays a visit to the remarkable boy, with heaps of sugar candy to coax his story out of him. The journalist secures permission for the boy to use a powerful telescope and observe the surface of Mars.

The description comes from the short story "The Telescopic Eye" by William Henry Rhodes (who often wrote under the pseudonym "Caxton"). Born in North Carolina, educated at Harvard, he made his living in Texas and California, though his first book was published in New York in 1846. His story "The Telescopic Eye," published in 1876, has the air of "The Great Moon Hoax," a series from the New York Sun in 1835, usually attributed to Richard A. Locke.

OH! brother loved, thy name's forever dear

Noah Clodfelter wrote that he wished his name always be remembered with the name of his brother, A. N. Clodfelter.* His brother died of tuberculosis, however, on January 7, 1879. He was 24. The elder Clodfelter dedicated a massive three-part poem, "Humphrey's Forest," to his deceased brother:

OH! brother loved, thy name's forever dear,
It is inscribed in living letters here,
How oft I've marked this dear old pensive tree,
That bears the name so plainly here of thee;
Could smiles avert the tears from off my face,
Whene'er I tread upon this sacred place,
And read that name forever dear to me,
Thy own initials, brother, A. N. C.

The poem uses the forest — and, more specifically, the single tree upon which Clodfelter's brother has inscribed his initials — as a place to remember the man's time on earth, but also to look heavenward. The poem, which stretches across parts of 16 pages in the collection Early Vanities, is deeply personal while also being universally hopeful. The poem continues:

Time's sweetest wing has sped forever on,
And left our records blank and quite unknown,
Gaze back upon the idle hours enjoyed,
And see how well they might have been employed,
But then the days of youth are not for fame,
But merely to applaud the merry game;
Blessed be the day when science first does gain,
And crush bad thoughts from out thy youthful brain.
When mediocre's jests will only tease
The once lost minds they did so truly please —
But vernal winds that shake the verdant leaf,
You thrill me with that lone and solemn grief,
That time has wrought and clasped so firm on me,
Since we did jest beneath this old beach tree.
But, oh! to me, how changed and how sublime,
Is such a change that teaches me to rhyme,
And you to dive in murky depths to find,
What seems beyond the comprehensive mind...

In what seems like an endless series of rhyming couplets, Clodfelter continues seeing the passage of time, the passage of life to death in the tree, further emphasized when he finds his father's initials also carved there. The passing of generations also reminds him that the past can never be retrieved and that some will be remembered, others forgotten. From the second part of the poem:

In Humphrey's Woods the blooming wreaths will grow
While lasts the valleys, or the fountains flow,
I long while walking tho' those sober scenes,
To see them often in my vision'd dreams,
I'll call them up whene'er my mind's oppress'd,
To give me solace and to give me rest,
I'll think how oft I've roamed from shade to shade,
In search of game within this sylvan glade... 

*It seems that the majority of the Clodfelter men used merely their initials rather than their full names. Noah, for example, most often signed his work N. J. Clodfelter.

Birth of Rand: Do ye miss me?

Marion H. Rand was born in Philadelphia on January 5, 1824, though she eventually moved to South Carolina (where she died at age 25). Her writing began as a hobby when she was 8, though she was published by age 14. Her work was accepted by popular magazines and journals including Graham's and Godey's Lady's Book. Her early death, said some critics, prevented her from realizing her full potential as a poet. Nevertheless, her work was collected in major anthologies of women's writing, including The Female Poets of America, edited by Thomas Buchanan Read, and American Female Poets, edited by Caroline May.

Very little is recorded of the life of Marion Rand, as she achieved no substantial fame in her lifetime. Her poem "Home," however, may glance at her own family life and, if autobiographical, demonstrates a tender feeling marked by her absence from them. The poem begins with the adage "Absence makes the heart grow fonder":

Do ye miss me, dear ones, when from our loved home
   So long this yearning spirit hath been parted?
And do ye look with longings like mine own
   To welcome back again the weary-hearted?
                            Do ye miss me yet?

In the bright morning hour, when I was ever
   The first to greet thee at the social board,
Thou, who though often saddened, yet didst never
   Withhold thine answering smile and loving word,
                            My gentle Mother.

When to our daily tasks together turning,
   Thou who wert ever with me, day by day,
Thy young companions and their pleasures scorning,
   Lest I should be too lonely on my way,
                            My merry Brother.

When at the midday meal again unbroken
   Our little circle met, e'en now I see
My Mother's look of chiding, yet unspoken,
   When I forgot the reverence due to thee,
                            Our first, "our Eldest."

In the cool twilight hour, when we would gather
   In playful converse, and thy toils were o'er,
Dost thou not miss me? too, my graver Brother,
   Now that thy loving arm can clasp no more
                            Thine absent Sister?

When darker night closed in, and early seeking
   My quiet couch, there peacefully to rest,
How I recall that glance so fondly speaking,
   As thou wouldst draw me to thy care-worn breast,
                            My dear, kind Father.

And thou, bright cherub in thy path of flowers,
   Strown by the hand of love afresh each day,
Thou hast not known the pang of lonely hours,
   Thou hast not missed me on thy gladsome way,
                            Our household darling.

But through the long, long day, in every hour,
   In all the heart can feel, the eye can see,
Hast thou not felt the parting's bitter power?
   Hast thou not missed me, e'en as I miss thee,
                            My own sweet Sister?

Hubner: Beyond the grave I'll live again!

Though he was one of many dubbed "poet laureate of the South," Charles W. Hubner was more of a scholar of American writing than a creator of original poetry. Before his death in Atlanta on January 3, 1929, he had collected several anthologies of poetry and prose, particularly ones which focused on writers from the Southern states. Still, he did write several poems himself, including ones dedicated to the poets he studied, including Sidney Lanier, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry Timrod. The Maryland-born Hubner was 94 years old when he died but, more than twenty years earlier, he already recognized he was aging, as represented in his poem "Growing Old":

I'm growing old, and yet no fear
    Of death or grave appals me;
Still, as in days of youth, the dear
    Sweet love of life enthrals me;
And still my spirit gladly hears
The music of the flying years.

I'm growing old; my hands, my limbs
    Less supple are, less light;
And sometimes a strange mist bedims—
    By tears begot—my sight,
But still with steady steps my soul
Fares bravely on toward her goal.

I'm growing old; Life's tree has shed
    Its blossoms long ago;
The winds that blow about my head
    Are chill with sleet and snow,
Yet they, in some mysterious way,
Still bring the violet scent of May.

I'm growing old; alas! so far
    My youth behind me lies,
It seems to be a phantom-star
    In dream-imagined skies,
And yet one touch of Memory's wand
Transports me to youth's fairy-land.

I'm growing old—how swiftly flies
    Time's shuttle through the loom!
Weaving before my very eyes
    My garment for the tomb;
Yet fear I not, nor feel I pain,
Beyond the grave I'll live again!

My Favorite Obscure Literary Figures of 2013

Clodfelter: Farewell, on earth, farewell
Originally published:
January 27, 2013

Indiana poet Noah J. Clodfelter mourns the loss of his young son Byron (named after the poet) in 1879 and the touching poet he wrote a few days later: "Methinks I see my little boy, / With hands extended to me now, As if in ecstacy of joy, / To press fond kisses on my brow."

Death of Sill: can't be worse than Ohio
Originally published:
February 27, 1813

On the death of poet Edward Rowland Sill (pictured here) in 1887, as well as his thoughts on life and death: "And so, if life is endlessly manifold, we may hope for good and great things, here or hereafter."

Death of Burnham: To us is the weeping
Originally published:
June 22, 2013

In this post on the 1873 death of New Hampshire born poet Samuel Burnham, what moved me most was his last utterance, recorded simply as: "Beautiful."

Weeks: I am glad to be alive!
Originally published:
September 21, 2013

This post introduced New York writer Robert Kelley Weeks, born September 21, 1840, and his unshakably optimistic poetry. "Butterflies float in a dream..."

Birth of John Gardiner Calkins Brainard
Originally published:
October 21, 2013

On the birth of this quadruple-named Connecticut poet in 1796 and his short career in publishing and the law — as well as his poem on the most heinous of crimes, the stealing of newspapers.

Evils oppressing themselves or others
Originally published:
November 21, 2013

The final installment of "Woman and Her Needs" by Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and her rallying cry for women's equality. This was actually a two-parter, meant to add to the post on her last installment of the same essay from June 2013.

And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed

Abraham Lincoln, in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. In it, he ordered that all persons held enslaved would "henceforward... be free." Emancipation took effect on January 1, 1863. John Greenleaf Whittier, in his capacity as poet and editor, had spent the majority of his career up to that point fighting against slavery. He celebrated the victory in his poem "The Proclamation," dated January 1, 1863:

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds
Of Ballymena, wakened with these words:
            "Arise and flee
Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"

According to legend, St. Patrick had once been enslaved by Milcho in Ballymena, Ireland. It was during this period that Patrick turned to prayer and believed his enslavement was punishment for his disbelief. His prayer reassured him that he would be a prophet and, years later, he returned to convert Milcho (who remained an unbeliever). Whittier, then, asks enslaved African Americans to wake up, be free, and become prophets in their own right. The poem continues:

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven
The angels singing of his sins forgiven,
            And, wondering, sees,
His prison opening to their golden keys.

He rose a man who laid him down a slave,
Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,
            And outward trod
Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away;
And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,
            Though back and limb
Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon him!"

So he went forth; but in God’s time he came
To light on Uilline’s hills a holy flame;
            And, dying, gave
The land a saint that lost him as a slave.

O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb
Waiting for God, your hour at last has come,
            And freedom's song
Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint
Of ages; but, like Ballymena’s saint,
            The oppressor spare,
Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.

Go forth, like him! like him return again,
To bless the land whereon in bitter pain
            Ye toiled at first,
And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed.

The same day, Ralph Waldo Emerson issued his own poetic song "The Boston Hymn" at a public ceremony in Boston.