Sprague: a purer and holier flame

The city of Boston, Massachusetts celebrated the anniversary of its settlement on September 17, 1830 (though listed as a "centennial," it was actually the bicentennial; Boston's founding dates to 1630, ten years after the Mayflower). To commemorate the event in poetry, they chose that city's most famous and most accomplished poet: Charles Sprague.

A Boston banker by day, Sprague presented "An Ode: Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, at the Centennial Celebration of the Settlement of the City" before an enthusiastic audience. As might be expected for an event like this, Sprague's poem chronicles the history of Boston, beginning with "Our Fathers" who "braved a pathless sea" to establish a new "empire," as he calls it. He then invites the spirits of those founders to join the celebration, to come "as ye came of yore" to establish "the beacon-banner of another world." From the tenth stanza:

O many a time it hath been told,
The story of those men of old:
For this fair poetry hath wreathed
  Her sweetest, purest flower;
For this proud eloquence hath breathed
  His strain of loftiest power;
Devotion, too, hath lingered round
Each spot of consecrated ground,
  And hill and valley blessed;
There, where our banished Fathers strayed,
There, where they loved and wept and prayed,
  There, where their ashes rest.

Sprague, who typically avoided controversial topics, also notes that the "savages" that were encountered upon settling the New World are true men who share in love and spiritual beliefs. For that reason, Sprague speaks on behalf of "the red man" whose love for freedom rivals any other American. The poem passionately speaks about their history, intertwined with the founding of the country. He also pleads for Bostonians to seek "a purer and holier flame": instead of pursuing gold (which can be as much a tyrant as the monarch Americans revolted against), remember that freedom means one can never be poor.

The city of Boston paid for the poem to be printed and distributed. City council members called it an "elegant, interesting and instructive Poem."

Sprague and Clarke: Phi Beta Kappa

The Phi Beta Kappa Society honors excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. The chapter at Harvard College was founded in 1799 and hosts an annual literary exercise near commencement every year. On August 27, 1829, the annual address was given by Charles Sprague, the "banker-poet of Boston." Harvard also granted Sprague an honorary doctorate (though he never went to college).

Sprague's lengthy poem, Curiosity, pays homage to that unique human drive for knowledge. "It came from Heaven," an inheritance from the archangels when the planet was created, given directly to Adam. Every generation, in turn, inherits it as well:

'Tis Curiosity—who hath not felt
Its spirit, and before its altar knelt?
In the pleased infant see its power expand,
When first the coral fills his little hand;
Throned in his mother's lap, it dries each tear,
As her sweet legend falls upon his ear;
Next it assails him in his top's strange hum,
Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum;
Each gilded toy, that doting love bestows,
He longs to break and every spring expose.

On the same day 17 years later, on August 27, 1846, Rev. James Freeman Clarke gave his own Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard. He sets the tone for his own poem (which apparently was not titled) in the first stanza:

No high, heroic song, no lyric lay,
No lover's tale, shall win your ears-today;
A serious purpose claims the earnest Muse—
Our Country, and its Hopes, the theme I choose.

Clarke says that humanity has become "narrow, selfish, blind." Patriotism, he notes, is somewhat treasonous because the true aims of the Founding Fathers have never been met:

They framed our Union on the broadest plan;
The Equality and Brotherhood of man.

Clarke then roundly attacks the concepts of slavery and the hypocrisy of calling the United States a "free" country "except a Slave be fettered at its base!" Clarke's poem may have been too political for Harvard in 1846; he later wrote "most of the papers said [it] was not artistic."

Tributes to Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's actual birth date is uncertain but it is generally believed to be April 23, 1564. The Bard certainly was a major influence to several American writers, including ones you've never heard of. One, for example, was Charles Sprague (1791-1875) the "Banker Poet of Boston." He presented his "Shakespeare Ode" in Boston in 1823. It reads, in part:

  God of the glorious Lyre!
Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang,
  While Jove's exulting choir
Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang, —
  Come! bless the service and the shrine
  We consecrate to thee and thine.

  Fierce from the frozen north,
  When Havoc led his legions forth,
O'er Learning's sunny groves the dark destroyers spread;
  In dust the sacred statue slept,
  Fair Science round her altars wept,
  And Wisdom cowled his head...

  Then Shakespeare rose!
  Across the trembling strings
  His daring hand he flings,
  And lo! a new creation glows!
There, clustering round, submissive to his will,
Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfil...

Looking for more obscurity? Another Shakespeare fan was the Charleston, South Carolina-born Augustus Julian Requier (1825-1887). Requier was, for a time, Attorney General of Alabama (a role he held when that state became part of the Confederacy). He spent his last years in the state of New York. His "Ode to Shakespeare" was published in 1860:

He went forth into Nature and he sung,
Her first-born of imperial sway — the lord
Of sea and continent and clime and tongue;
Striking the Harp with whose sublime accord
The whole Creation rung!

He went forth into Nature and he sung
Her grandest terrors and her simplest themes —
The torrent by the beetling crag o'erhung,
And the wild-daisy on its brink that gleams
Unharmed, and lifts a dew-drop to the sun!
The muttering of the tempest in its halls
Of darkness turreted; beheld alone
By an o'erwhelming brilliance which appals —
The turbulence of Ocean — the soft calm
Of the sequestered vale — the bride-like day,
Or sainted Eve, dispensing holy balm
From her lone lamp of silver thro' the gray
That leads the star-crowned Night adown the mountain way!
These were his themes and more — no little bird
Lit in the April forest but he drew
From its wild notes a meditative word —
A gospel that no other mortal knew:
Bard, priest, evangelist! from rarest cells
Of riches inexhaustible he took
The potent ring of her profoundest spells,
And wrote great Nature's Book!

If you know of any better Shakespeare tributes from other 19th-century poets, especially obscure ones, feel free to add a link in the comments section.