Elmore: Masons, you are at home

When the corner stone was first laid out for the new Masonic Temple in Crawfordsville, Indiana, local poet James B. Elmore was inspired to write a poem for the building in progress. His poem, "Laying the Corner Stone," was written October 31, 1901, the month after the actual cornerstone had been laid:

Workmen, lay the stone;
     Lay it good and firm,
That Masons, as they come,
     May of our wisdom learn.

Love is the tie that binds
     The hearts of mortal man;
With compass and with square
     We lay this stone so grand.

Master, thou hast wrought
     A work that'll last for aye.
This is the purpose sought;
     Your love cast not away.

God grant this temple rise
     Heavenward with gilded dome.
Go seek and win the prize.
     Masons, you are at home.

We consecrate to-day
     This noble work of art;
We must our homage pay,
     Binding our hands and heart.

O God, to thee we pray;
     Let friendship be our creed.
Cast, cast none away;
     But help, help those in need.

Born and raised on a farm near Alamo, Indiana (the same town as fellow poet Noah J. Clodfelter), Elmore became a teacher but admitted, "It always seemed to be a part of my nature to write poetry." He also admitted he never rewrote his poems once he finished them, saying too much of the original feeling was lost in every edit.

The Masonic Lodge in Crawfordsville counted among its members best-selling author Lew Wallace. When the building was completed in 1904, Wallace spoke at its dedication. The chapter in the town had started some 60 years earlier and the building still stands today. Despite the poetic imagery, the lodge has never had a golden dome.

Birth of John Adams: Herculean President

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735. On his birthday in 1799, Adams was sitting as the second President of the United States in Philadelphia when playwright, actress, and author Susanna Rowson wrote an ode in his honor. Rowson, though born in England, spent most of her life in Massachusetts, Adams's home state.

Rowson's long poem first tells the legend of Alcides (an alternate name for the demigod Hercules), and how both Virtue and Vice sought him in his childhood to fight for his soul. Alcides, however, was not tempted by Vice's deceit, however, and even picks an entire oak tree to use as a spear against her. The reader of the legend is also the narrator or speaker in the poem and, so moved by the legend, she wonders if it would be possible for a mortal to have a soul so pure. Right on cue, a vision appears to her of an angelic figure with the word "Independence" on her belt and "Unity" and "Heaven" on her bracelets.

"And who art thou, bright vision?" I enquired;
    "My name," she smiling cried, "is Liberty;"
"Oh nymph, by all beloved, by all desired,
    "And art thou come," I cried, "to dwell with me?"
"No," said the goddess, "I am come to chide."
    "Why dost thou wonder at Alcides' worth?
"Columbia boasts, and she may boast with pride,
        "An equal hero's birth.
"The morn which dapples in the east,
    "And makes all nature gay,
"Speaks what should be by all exprest;
"Let every face in smiles be drest,
    "For 'tis his natal day."

The spirit of Liberty acknowledges that Alcides accomplished great things, but that Adams (named in the poem) is greater, "soaring on superior worth." She then commands the speaker (now, presumably, Rowson herself) to honor him on his birthday by writing a poem:

"Then rise, and tune the vocal lay,
    "Invoke the Muse's aid;
"Small is the tribute thou canst pay,
    "Yet be that tribute paid,
"And thousands in that tribute will bear part,
    "For all conspire to raise the festive lay,
    "And as they joyful hail his natal day,
"Pour forth the offerings of a grateful heart."

Birth of William Bingham Tappan

Described by one critic as "the most industrious and voluminous of our religious poets," William Bingham Tappan was born in Beverly, Massachusetts on October 29, 1794. It was said he began writing verse at age 9, moved to Philadelphia after reaching his majority, and published his first book in that city when he was 23. Following that, he became a teacher in New Jersey. He spent a few years in Cincinnati before returning to Massachusetts in 1837.

Many of Tappan's poems and hymns remain untitled or borrow from the first line. This, "Home of my youth," was published in a collection in 1822:

Home of my youth! with fond delight,
On thee doth recollection dwell;
Home of my youth! how gaily bright,
The scenes that childhood loved so well.

Cot of my fathers! well I know,
The spot that saw my infant dawn;
Near the green lane, the old elm row—
The village spire—the grassy lawn.

O! sweet to me the laughing hours,
When earth seemed gay, and heaven was fair;
When fancy culled her thornless flowers,
And pleasure reigned, unknown to care.

Home of my youth! this heart away,
Recals those moments dear to me;
Often in dreams will memory stray,
Home of my youth—to weep o'er thee.

Of that life, and that love, and that early doom

Henry Timrod did all he could to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. Illness forced him to leave the army, as did his attempts to serve as a war correspondent from the war front. Instead, he moved to Columbia, South Carolina and tried to live a domestic life. He married his love Katie Godwin and started a family while serving as a journalist in town.

Then, about a year after his marriage, General William Tecumseh Sherman came to South Carolina and laid waste to Timrod's town. Known as an anti-Union provocateur, Timrod went into hiding. Columbia, the state's capital city, was left in ruins. "The truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina," Sherman record. "I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her."

Months later, amid the chaos, on October 23, 1865, Timrod's son Willie died. Willie had been born that previous Christmas. With a father's pride, Timrod reported to a friend, "Everybody wonders at him! He is so transparently fair; so ethereal!" But his son's death left Timrod extremely forlorn; coupled with the destruction of his city, the loss of his job (as his newspaper ceased to exist), the Timrod family fell into poverty and despair. "[He] was the sweetest child," Timrod later wrote, "But every body thought him too ethereal to live." Even after the conclusion of the Civil War, the poet never recovered and died destitute in 1867.

Timrod's four-page poem, "Our Willie," serves both as a memorial to the boy as well as a testimonial of the poet's sinking despair. The poem concludes:

How could we speak in human phrase,
Of such scarce earthly traits and ways,
                What would not seem
                A doting dream,
In the creed of these sordid days?
                No! let us keep
                Deep, deep,
In sorrowing heart and aching brain,
This story hidden with the pain,
Which, since that blue October night
When Willie vanished from our sight,
Must haunt us even in our sleep.

In the gloom of the chamber where he died,
And by that grave which, through our care,
From Yule to Yule of every year,
Is made like Spring to bloom;
And where, at times, we catch the sigh
As of an angel floating nigh,
Who longs but has not power to tell
That in that violet-shrouded cell
Lies nothing better than the shell
Which he had cast aside—
By that sweet grave, in that dark room,
We may weave at will for each other's ear,
Of that life, and that love, and that early doom,
The tale which is shadowed here:
To us alone it will always be
As fresh as our own misery;
But enough, alas! for the world is said,
In the brief "Here lieth" of the dead!

Birth of John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

From his birth in New London, Connecticut, on October 21, 1796, it seemed that John Gardiner Calkins Brainard was destined to become a lawyer. His father was a judge on the superior court of Connecticut and the young Brainard was sent to his father's alma mater of Yale to study law. He passed the bar in 1819, started his own legal practice, and hated it. He particularly was displeased by the "personal altercation, contradiction and... hard collision" of his colleagues.

Instead, his genial, if not, timid, temperament pulled him to poetry, an interest of his since boyhood and into his college years. He retired from the life of a lawyer after three years and became an editor for the Connecticut Mirror based in Hartford. To write was his passion and, though he disliked the frequent controversy in the field, the world of journalism gave him a daily outlet. He dedicated space in the Mirror to his own poetry and from these writings published his first book, Occasional Pieces of Poetry. To Brainard's surprise, the book was a success and drew significant admiration.

He was, however, tempered by sudden gloominess before he could publish a second book. Though ambitious for success as a writer, he was never convinced of his own worth. Brainard turned his attention to religious themes. He left his editorship in 1827, already sick of the tuberculosis that would kill him at the age of 32.

His poem "The Robber" refers to a true-life incident wherein someone stole, of all things, two bags of newspapers from a mail coach:

The moon hangs lightly on yon western hill;
And now it gives a parting look, like one
Who sadly leaves the guilty. You and I
Must watch, when all is dark, and steal along
By these lone trees, and wait for plunder. —Hush!
I hear the coming of some luckless wheel,
Bearing we know not what— perhaps the wealth
Torn from the needy, to be hoarded up
By those who only count it; and perhaps
The spendthrift's losses, or the gambler's gains,
The thriving merchant's rich remittances,
Or the small trifle some poor serving girl
Sends to her poorer parents. But come on—
Be cautious. — There — 'tis done; and now away,
With breath drawn in, and noiseless step, to seek
The darkness that befits so dark a deed.
Now strike your light.— Ye powers that look upon us!
What have we here? Whigs, Sentinels, Gazettes,
Heralds, and Posts, and Couriers — Mercuries,
Recorders, Advertisers, and Intelligencers —
Advocates and Auroras. — There, what's that!
That's — a Price Current.
                                         I do venerate
The man, who rolls the smooth and silky sheet
Upon the well cut copper. I respect
The worthier names of those who sign bank bills;
And, though no literary man, I love
To read their short and pithy sentences.
But I hate types, and printers — and the gang
Of editors and scribblers. Their remarks,
Essays, songs, paragraphs, and prophecies,
I utterly detest. —And these, particularly,
Are just the meanest and most rascally,
"Stale and unprofitable" publications,
I ever read in my life.

Edward Rowland Sill: like a fly on a pin

When Edward Rowland Sill heard that the well-known and highly-respected editor Edmund Clarence Stedman intended to include him in a book of poetry, he was hesitant. On October 13, 1885, he wrote to their mutual friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

Can you not tell Mr. Stedman (if his book is not yet beyond proofcorrecting) that one, at least, of the "twilight" poets, namely, "Sill," would much prefer to be left out of his enumeration? He had me in his "Century " article. I am not a publishing author (the booklet of verses of which I think I sent you a copy — "The Venus of Milo," etc., was never published, and never will be), and so might escape being stuck in his catalogue, like a fly on a pin. Don't you think?

Sill, Connecticut-born but widely-traveled, apparently refused to call himself an author or, perhaps more likely, refused to live up to the scrutiny of national exposure which Stedman's book would have drawn. Sill was not exaggerating. At the time of his letter, he had only published one book — a translation of another person's book. The manuscript he had shown Stedman was intended only for his friends, never for publication. He claimed many of his poems — "the confounded little things" he burned in manuscript. He died two years later, having never published a book. The poem he mentioned to Aldrich, however, "The Venus of Milo," was collected posthumously. From that poem:

  Before the broken marble, on a day,
There came a worshiper: a slanted ray
Struck in across the dimness of her shrine
And touched her face as to a smile divine;
For it was like the worship of a Greek
At her old altar. Thus I heard him speak: —

  Men call thee Love: is there no holier name
Than hers, the foam-born, laughter-loving dame?
Nay, for there is than love no holier name:
All words that pass the lips of mortal men
With inner and with outer meaning shine;
An outer gleam that meets the common ken,
An inner light that but the few divine.

Thou art the love celestial, seeking still
The soul beneath the form; the serene will;
The wisdom, of whose deeps the sages dream;
The unseen beauty that doth faintly gleam
In stars, and flowers, and waters where they roll;
The unheard music whose faint echoes even
Make whosoever hears a homesick soul
Thereafter, till he follow it to heaven.

Ultimately, Sill received only a passing comment, and not even his full name, in Stedman's book, which turned out to be a much more significant undertaking than a mere compilation. Stedman, in fact, produced a massive, all-encompassing, running catalogue of American poetry. Poets of America (1885) was meant to prove the important role that poetry played in defining American cultural and intellectual development. The book was a sort of historic record which meant to add to the more typical record of politics and war that end up in history books. Stedman believed that, with the advancement of the United States in general, with its power and wealth in particular, one would see it best reflected in its imaginative creations, with poetry as "its highest forms of expression." After all, he said, "The song of a nation is accepted as an ultimate test of the popular spirit."

Had I a thousand lives to give: Memorializing the Boy Hero of the Confederacy

Sam Davis became a courier for the Confederacy after his time as a soldier ended in injury. In November 1863, he was found by the Union Army secreting Union battle plans. He refused to name his accomplice, and his alleged response to his captors became legendary: "If I had a thousand lives to live, I would give them all rather than to betray a friend." Supposedly, even as they were about to hang him as a spy, they offered him another opportunity to save his own life by giving them information. He refused and was hanged. He was 21 years old.

The incident and Davis's commitment to his beliefs inspired many in the South, even after the Civil War. His youth and resiliency inspired his nickname as the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy." On October 11, 1906, nearly 43 years after Davis's capture and execution, local citizens led mainly by women unveiled a statue of Davis in Pulaski, Tennessee near the spot of his death (pictured above shortly after its unveiling; incidentally, the same town has infamous notoriety as the founding place of the Ku Klux Klan). Read at that ceremony was a poem by Alabama-born poet John Trotwood Moore. In fact, Moore's poem, "Sam Davis," had already been published and its popularity helped spread support for the monument and increased Davis's status in collective memory of Tennessee.

"Tell me his name and you are free,"
The General said, while from the tree
The grim rope dangled threat'ningly.

The birds ceased singing—happy birds.
That sang of home and mother-words.
The sunshine kissed his cheek—dear sun:
It loves a life that's just begun!
The very breezes held their breath
To watch the fight twixt life and death.
And O, how calm and sweet and free.
Smiled back the hills of Tennessee!
Smiled back the hills, as if to say,
"O, save your life for us to-day."

"Tell me his name and you are free,"
The General said, " and I shall see
You safe within the rebel line—
I'd love to save such life as thine."

A tear gleamed down the ranks of blue—
(The bayonets were tipped with dew).
Across the rugged cheek of war
God's angels rolled a teary star.
The boy looked up—'twas this they heard:
"And would you have me break my word?"

A tear stood in the General's eye!
"My boy, I hate to see thee die
Give me the traitor's name and fly!"

Young Davis smiled, as calm and free
As he who walked on Galilee:
"Had I a thousand lives to live.
Had I a thousand lives to give,
I'd lose them, nay, I'd gladly die
Before I'd live one life, a lie!"
He turned—for not a soldier stirred—
"Your duty, men—I gave my word."

The hills smiled back a farewell smile.
The breeze sobbed o'er his hair awhile,
The birds broke out in glad refrain,
The sunbeams kissed his cheek again—
Then, gathering up their blazing bars.
They shook his name among the stars.

O Stars, that now his brothers are,
O Sun, his sire in truth and light.
Go tell the list'ning worlds afar
Of him who died for truth and right!
For martyr of all martyrs he
Who dies to save an enemy!

The poem obviously romanticizes the event, showing that the very landscape of Tennessee supported his actions and his decisions. Even the enemy regrets such a strong, young hero should die. The monument of Davis equally romanticizes the subject, showing him with arms crossed defiantly and fearlessly. Whether or not these depictions are entirely accurate is irrelevant; Sam Davis was one of many examples of Southerners creating larger-than-life legends about the Confederacy to give it a positive image.

Birth of Elizabeth Akers Allen

Elizabeth Anne Chase was born on October 9, 1832, in small town called Strong, Maine. Her mother died when she was young and her father moved the family to Farmington, Maine. It was there that young Elizabeth began writing poetry as a teenager under the pseudonym Florence Percy. Her most famous poem, "Rock Me To Sleep, Mother," was published under that name in 1859. One editor claimed the poem had been set to music at least 30 times by the turn of the century. She had married Marshall Taylor, but the marriage ended in divorce within a few years. With him she had at least one daughter, who later became an editor in California under the name Florence Percy.

Traveling in Rome, she met the sculptor Benjamin Paul Akers, also from Maine. It was in Italy that she wrote her most famous poem and sent it to be published in the Saturday Evening Post. Her absence from the country during its publication caused some confusion over its authorship; at least one other claimed to have written the poem. In 1860, she and Akers were married, though he died within a year. She later married a New Yorker named E. M. Allen in 1865.

Elizabeth Akers Allen published several books of poetry and was frequently included in prominent literary magazines of the day, including the Atlantic Monthly. One critic noted her poems were popular because they are "full of tender feeling, without any tinge of morbidness." Indeed, most of her work features an uplifting moral message, triumphant faith, and domestic tranquility. Her poem "O Cricket, Hush!" (c. 1891) alludes to the belief that a chirping cricket signifies the coming of winter:

O cricket! hush your boding song!
   I know the truth it makes so plain;
You say that autumn dies ere long,
And soon the winter's wrath and wrong
   Will chill the pallid world again.

O mournful winds of midnight, cease
   To breathe your low, prophetic sigh;
Too clearly for my spirit's peace
I see the mellow days decrease,
   And feel December drawing nigh.

Fall silently, October rain,
   Nor take that wailing undertone,
Nor beat so loudly on the pane
The sad, monotonous refrain
   Which tells me summer-time has flown.

Be charier of your golden days,
   O goldenest month of all the throng!
Oh, pour less lavishly your rays!
Hoard carefully your purple haze,
   So haply it may last more long!

Spendthrift October, art thou wise,
   Who wastest, in thy plenteous prime,
More beauty on the earth and skies,
More hue and glow, than would suffice
   To brighten all the winter-time?

Yes, better autumn all delight,
   And then a winter all unblest,
Than months of mingled dark and bright,
Of faded tints and pallid light,
   Imperfect dreams and broken rest.

Ah, better if our life could know
   One wholly happy, perfect year,
One time of cloudless joy and glow,
And then its days of rayless woe,
   Than this commingled hope and fear;

This doubt and dread which naught consoles,
   Which mark our brows ere manhood's prime;
The dread uncertainty that rolls
Like chariot-wheels across our souls,
   And makes us old before our time.

So pour your light, October skies!
   O fairest skies which ever are!
Put on, O earth, your bravest dyes,
And smile, although the cricket cries,
   And winter threatens from afar!

Death of Tecumseh: Stop, stranger!

On October 5, 1813, near Moraviantown, in Ontario, Canada, United States forces led by William Henry Harrison engaged in battle with the British Army allied with s Native American coalition led by a Shawnee named Tecumseh. The Battle of the Thames River, as it was called, was a decisive victory for the Americans in the War of 1812. Tecumseh, however, was killed in battle that day.

Charles A. Jones, a poet/lawyer born in Philadelphia but raised in Cincinnati, honored Tecumseh in a poem in 1838. It begins by noting that there was no known grave marker for him:

Stop, stranger! there Tecumseh lies;
    Behold the lowly resting-place
Of all that of the hero dies;
    The Caesar — Tully, of his race,
Whose arm of strength, and fiery tongue,
    Have won him an immortal name,
And from the mouths of millions wrung
    Reluctant tribute to his fame.

Stop — for 'tis glory claims thy tear!
    True worth belongs to all mankind;
And he whose ashes slumber here,
    Though man in form was god in mind.
What matter he was not like thee,
    In race and color; 'tis the soul
That marks man's true divinity;
    Then let not shame thy tears control.

Art thou a patriot? — so was he!
    His breast was Freedom's holiest shrine;
And as thou bendest there thy knee,
    His spirit will unite with thine.
All that a man can give, he gave;
    His life: the country of his sires
From the oppressor's grasp to save:
    In vain — quench'd are his nation's fires.

Art thou a soldier? dost thou not
    O'er deeds chivalric love to muse?
Here stay thy steps — what better spot
    Couldst thou for contemplation choose?
The earth beneath is holy ground;
    It holds a thousand valiant braves;
Tread lightly o'er each little mound,
    For they are no ignoble graves.

Tecumseh had been the main figure responsible for rallying an alliance among Native American tribes. For years, he had called for the return of lands granted to his people years earlier while Harrison was governor of the Indiana territory. Jones celebrates Tecumseh's leadership and bravery by comparing his work to other legendary battles in the poem, including those at Marathon and Thermopylae. Tecumseh, after all, sacrificed himself for an idea: that his people deserved a recognized country of their own. Jones goes on:

Oh, softly fall the summer dew,
    The tears of heaven, upon his sod,
For he in life and death was true,
    Both to his country and his God;
For oh, if God to man has given,
    From his bright home beyond the skies,
One feeling that's akin to heaven,
    'Tis his who for his country dies.

Rest, warrior, rest! — Though not a dirge
    Is thine, beside the wailing blast,
Time cannot in oblivion merge
    The light thy star of glory cast;
While heave yon high hills to the sky,
    While rolls yon dark and turbid river,
Thy name and fame can never die—
    Whom Freedom loves, will live forever.

Execution of John André: not the fear of death

Major John André was a British army officer hanged as a spy on October 2, 1780 after conspiring with Benedict Arnold over the fate of West Point during the American Revolution. André pleaded with George Washington that he die honorably via firing squad; instead, he was ordered to be hanged, the traditional execution method for a spy.

The drama of the conspiracy, as well as the capture of André, his trial, and his execution all unfolded in the Hudson River Valley area of New York. Nathaniel Parker Willis would eventually settle in that area but he was, in fact, living in England at the time that he composed his poem "André's Request to Washington" (1835):

It is not the fear of death
     That damps my brow;
It is not for another breath
     I ask thee now;
I can die with lip unstirr'd
     And a quiet heart—
Let but this prayer be heard
     Ere I depart.

I can give up my mother's look—
     My sister's kiss;
I can think of love—yet brook
     A death like this!
I can give up the young fame
     I burn'd to win—
All—but the spotless name
     I glory in!

Thine is the power to give,
     Thine to deny,
Joy for the hour I live—
     Calmness to die.
By all the brave should cherish,
     By my dying breath,
I ask that I may perish
     By a soldier's death.

Some 40 years after Willis's poem, just about 100 years after André's execution, Charlotte Fiske Bates offered her own poem to the executed Major. Like Willis, Bates is mostly sympathetic, though her narrator here is not André himself but a visitor to the place of his death:

This is the place where André met that death
Whose infamy was keenest of its throes,
And in this place of bravely yielded breath
His ashes found a fifty years' repose;

And then, at last, a transatlantic grave,
With those who have been kings in blood or
fame. As Honor here some compensation gave
For that once forfeit to a hero's name.

But whether in the Abbey's glory laid,
Or on so fair but fatal Tappan's shore.
Still at his grave have noble hearts betrayed
The loving pity and regret they bore.

In view of all he lost, — his youth, his love,
And possibilities that wait the brave,
Inward and outward bound, dim visions move
Like passing sails upon the Hudson's wave.

The country's Father! how do we revere
His justice, — Brutus-like in its decree, —
With André-sparing mercy, still more dear
Had been his name, — if that, indeed, could be!