A dream came to a sailor bold

400 years after Christopher Columbus "sailed the ocean blue," a society of New Yorkers donated a statue of the explorer. It was finally installed and unveiled in Central Park on May 12, 1894. The aging Julia Ward Howe was invited to read a special poem written for the occasion, "The Mariner's Dream":

Where shall we find the golden key
That opes to peace and liberty?
The earth is full of grievous wars,
The soldier's tread her beauty mars,
The captive's chains are fast and locked,
The poor man by the rich man mocked.
The promise of the Christ we hear,
But who shall bring fulfillment near?

The poem predicts the founding of the United States as a land of "peace and liberty" and equality — and, certainly, of prosperity:

A dream came to a sailor bold,
A happy dream of good untold;
And a little bird sang: "Follow me
Westward, over the unknown sea.
A star shall lead thy chosen band,
And bring thy slender craft to land.
Beyond the waters thou shalt find
Regions of splendor unconfined,
Where giant rivers fruitful flow,
Where birds of tropic plumage glow,
Where the old treasures of thy race
Shall grow and multiply apace.
And ancient Rule renew its health
In a new glorious commonwealth."

The dreamer waking, bowed his head,
And on the wondrous errand sped.
With pleading rare he wrung the gold
From hands reluctant to unfold,
And loosing from old Europe's shore
Sailed westward, westward evermore.

Looking forward to a land "where sounded ne'er the Christian word," the poetic Columbus embarks on what he calls "Earth's noblest conquest." Though his crew is "distrustful," he vows to fulfill this vision, even if "all mankind" turns against him. This boldness, Howe notes, is now recognized as "millions of voices" sing in praise of Columbus.

Here gather we in Gotham town,
Of all our western world the crown,
While ladies fair and gallants gay
Unite to celebrate the day.
But while we list the high discourse,
And while the Paean has its course,
Let Faith re-consecrate this form,
Adventured once 'gainst sea and storm.

For 'twas this hand that held the key,
Unlocking Peace and Liberty.
When all we have and all we are
Hung on the guidance of a star,
And on the answer, dimly guessed
In one resolved, responsive breast.

Howe's tribute to Clarke: hero in the fight

James Freeman Clarke would have turned 100 years old in 1910; instead, he died in 1888 after a long life as a religious leader, author, and reformer. Nevertheless, his admirers gathered in Boston without him to celebrate the centennial anniversary of his birth on April 3, 1910 (a day early). Among the group was Julia Ward Howe, an author and reformer herself. About a half a century earlier, Clarke had suggested that Howe write new words for the tune "John Brown's Body"; the result was Howe's most well-remembered work, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." For the celebration of his 100th birthday, she presented her poem, "James Freeman Clarke":

Richer gift can no man give
Than he doth from God receive.
We in greatness would have pleasure,
But we must accept our measure.
Let us question, then, the grave,
Querying what the Master gave,
Whom, in his immortal state,
Grateful love would celebrate.

Only human life was his,
With its thin-worn mysteries.
Shall we not describe him, "Man,
Built to last a little span,
Like our Earth, his dwelling-place,
Swung aloft, 'twixt Time and Space,
Tuned for ecstasy and pain,
Ever prompted to attain
For the blessing or the curse
That Eternities rehearse?"
Lifting from the Past its veil,
What of his does now avail?

Just a mirror in his breast
That revealed a heavenly guest,
And the love that made us free
Of the same high company.
These he brought us, these he left
When we were of him bereft.

He was resolute and bright,
Was a hero in the fight,
Trained his gifts of speech and song
Holy lessons to prolong,
Made the great Apostle's dream
Present still and potent seem.
Human fortunes we must share,
Must endeavor, must forbear;
Days of weakness, nights of pain,
Try, and turn, and try again;
But Golconda has no mine
Could that legacy outshine,
Did we keep, through good and ill,
James Freeman's angel with us still.

150 years of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

Julia Ward Howe and her husband Samuel Gridley Howe were invited to the Washington D.C. area to observe the troops during the early months of the American Civil War. There, she heard troops singing the tune "John Brown's Body" and her friend, the minister James Freeman Clarke, suggested she write new words for the old tune.

In the early morning hours of November 18, 1861, Julia Ward Howe wrote those new words. As she recalled later, she was having difficulty sleeping when "the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain." She let the words come over her until "the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts" before she finally got up and wrote it all down. It soon became one of the most popular tunes at military camps throughout the remainder of the war. The poem was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
                                                   His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
                                                   His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
                                                   Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
                                                   Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
                                                   While God is marching on.

Lucy Stone: one of the anointed few

Lucy Stone was a well-known and respected abolitionist and suffragist. She became the first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree and kept her maiden name after she her marriage. As a public speaker and organizer, she was a constant advocate for civil rights throughout her life. She died in 1893 at the age of 75.

Stone's funeral was held on October 21, 1893. She had asked that her funeral be "simple and cheerful" but her wishes were undermined by the throng of admirers that came to pay their respects. Among her dozen pallbearers (six men and six women) was Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Her husband and supporter Henry Browne Blackwell had written to another champion of civil rights (especially for women), Julia Ward Howe: "what shall I do without her?" Howe memorialized Stone in a poem, "Lucy Stone":

Full of honors and of years,
   Lies our friend at rest,
Passing from earth's hopes and fears
   To the ever Blest.

One of the anointed few
   Touched with special grace
For a life whose service true
   Should redeem the race.

Where is that persuasive tone
   Welcome in our ears?
Still I hear it, sounding on,
   Through the golden spheres.

When we raise our battle cry
   For the holy Right,
We shall feel her drawing nigh
   With a spirit's might.

As the veil of flesh doth part,
   We behold her rise,
Crowned with majesty of heart:
   There true queendom lies.

Birthday parties for William Cullen Bryant

In rural Cummington, Massachusetts, William Cullen Bryant was born in a log cabin on November 3, 1794. Shortly thereafter, the family settled into a home atop a hill overlooking the Westfield River valley. Bryant's first job required him to walk to the next town every morning. On one of those walks, he saw the bird that inspired his one of his earliest recognized poems, "To a Waterfowl." Bryant later settled in New York state and edited several newspapers, including the New York Evening Post.

Bryant's 70th birthday was met with a gala event, thrown by the Century Club (he was a founding member). It drew the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Henry Theodore Tuckerman, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Read Lowell's poem to Bryant here; Whittier's is here.

Bryant died in 1878 at the age of 83 but the appreciation of his poetry continued. Three decades after the above birthday party, several celebrated what would have been his 100th birthday in 1894. Held near the family homestead (which Bryant himself later purchased for himself) in Cummington, attendees included Parke Godwin (Bryant's biographer and a poet himself), Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Julia Ward Howe. Howe apparently read the same poem for both the 70th and 100th birthday celebrations:

The age its latest decade shows,
The wondrous autumn near its close,
Revealing in its fateful span,
Unwonted ways of good to man.

Imprisoned vapor speeds its course,
Flies, quick with life th' electric force,
Nature's daemonic mysteries
Are angels now that win and please.

But dearer far to human ken,
The record of illustrious men,
The gifts conveyed in measures wrought
Of noble purpose and high thought.

Above the wild industrial din,
The race an hundred goals to win,
The gathered wealth, the rifled mine,
Still sounds the poet's song divine...

Birth of Julia Ward Howe

On May 27, 1893, the poet/activist Julia Ward Howe wrote in her journal:

My seventy-fourth birthday. Thank God for my continued life, health, and bodily and mental power. My prayer to Him is that, whether I am to have a year, a month, a week, or a day more, it may be for good to myself and others.

Later that day, she attended a reception for the women of the Press Association. After tea, Howe made a short speech and was given a birthday bouquet of carnations. In the evening, she practiced a sermon she was presenting at a Unitarian church the next day.

On the same day several years later, in 1909, Howe commemorated her own 90th birthday in a note to a friend and admirer.

You wrote me a lovely letter on my ninetieth birthday. I cannot help feeling as if the impression expressed by you and so many other kind friends of my personal merits must refer to some good work which I have yet to do. What I have done looks small to me, but I have tried a good deal for the best I have known. That is all I can say. I am much touched by your letter, and encouraged to go on trying. Don't you think that the best things are already in view? The opportunities for women, the growing toleration and sympathy in religion, the sacred cause of peace? I have lived, like Moses, to see the entrance to the Promised Land. How much is this to be thankful for! My crabbed hand shows how Time abridges my working powers, but I march on to the brave music still, as you and many of the juniors do.

Howe died about a year and a half after this letter at the age of 91. In addition to her many poems (including "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"), Howe served with several women's rights organizations, some of which she founded. She frequently lectured, even going to Europe and the Middle East to call for peace in response to the Franco-Prussian War and aiding a peace conference in London.

Poetic tributes for the death of Lincoln

April 15, 1865 — the death of Abraham Lincoln, America's first assassinated President — inspired many poetic tributes. Among them are poems by Richard Henry Stoddard, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and the very famous "O Captain! My Captain!" — perhaps the best-remembered poem by Walt Whitman (with a rhyming meter).

Perhaps one of the more surprising tributes in verse came from Herman Melville, today known as a novelist and, occasionally, a short story writer, rather than as a poet. In fact, in 1866, Melville published an entire volume of poems focused on the Civil War. As with many of Melville's later works, however, it was generally ignored. The poem to Lincoln, titled "Martyr," is introduced as being "indicative of the Passion of the People on the 15th of April, 1865." According the Melville, that passion is one of anger, threatening violence:

Good Friday was the day
  Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
  When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm—
  When with yearning he was filled
  To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
  But they killed him in his kindness,
  In their madness, in their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.

  There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
  But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
  Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
  The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver—
  The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
  Who in righteousness shall do
  What the heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
  For they killed him in his kindness
  In their madness and their blindness,
And his blood is on their hand.

  There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
  But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
  Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand. 

If you'd like, compare the tone of Melville's poem with that of Julia Ward Howe:

Crown his blood-stained pillow
   With a victor's palm;
Life's receding billow
   Leaves eternal calm.

At the feet Almighty
   Lay this gift sincere;
Of a purpose weighty,
   And a record clear.

With deliverance freighted
   Was this passive hand,
And this heart, high-fated,
   Would with love command.

Let him rest serenely
   In a Nation's care,
Where her waters queenly
   Make the West most fair.

In the greenest meadow
   That the prairies show,
Let his marble's shadow
   Give all men to know:

"Our First Hero, living,
   Made his country free;
Heed the Second's giving,
   Death for Liberty."

Other poetic tributes to Lincoln (there are lots) were collected here.

What does the Lord want to kill me for?

Julia Ward Howe was in New York while her oldest daughter (pictured) was dying. The author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was on tour lecturing (particularly for women's suffrage and other reforms). She rushed home in February to find her daughter, Julia Romana, in poor health — "but not dangerously ill," she wrote. However, Julia Romana thought she felt death was near, saying that the tide was coming to take her away. She had typhoid fever.

But Howe's presence made her feel just a little better. Even so, Howe had further engagements. As March came, she went from her home in Boston to Poughkeepsie, back to Boston to check on Julia Romana, then to Providence, back to Boston, then out to New York. Howe hired two nurses to care for Julia Romana but she was nervous and concerned about her daughter.

On March 9, 1886, she sent a telegram home to see if there was any improvement. On the contrary, Julia Romana had taken a turn for the worse. Howe had to wait until the next morning before a train could take her back to Boston. She brought a bottle of champagne with her but there was no mistaking it: Julia Romana was dying.

With mother holding one hand and her husband Michael Anagnos holding the other, Julia Romana noted she was grateful for the love of her parents and her husband. She asked, "What more can one want?" But, when Michael left the room, she privately asked her mother, "What does the Lord want to kill me for?" She died at the age of 42. What happened next got a little complicated.

Julia Ward Howe recorded that her daughter's last words were: "If this is not the right one, call another priestess — truth, truth." She later claimed an addition to those words: "Be kind to the little blind children, for they are papa's children" (she had worked at the Perkins School for the Blind, a school founded by Julia Ward Howe's husband Samuel Gridley Howe; Julia Romana's husband was its second director). Another daughter noted her sister's last words as: "Take care of the little blind children."

One Howe biographer noted the family tried to clean up the story, to make her into more of a martyr. As Valarie H. Ziegler wrote, "none of them [i.e. the family] had found Julia Romana the easiest person in the world to love."

The Boston Hymn

The same day that the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect (January 1, 1863), the philosopher/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson presented his commemorative poem "The Boston Hymn."

The poem follows the colonization of the Americas by religious pilgrims who turn aside the monarchs of the Old World for a new "king" named Freedom. God asks for this world to be run by "the humble." Soon, it is God who breaks the bonds of slavery:

I break your bonds and masterships,
   And I unchain the slave:
Free be his heart and hand henceforth,
   As wind and wandering wave.

Emerson presented the poem at a public event specifically to honor the Proclamation held at Boston's Music Hall. Later that day, he read the poem again, this time in private. That gathering included fellow Transcendentalist A. Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott as well as Julia Ward Howe (who read her own poem, "The Battle Hymn"). Emerson's poem was published a month later in The Atlantic Monthly, then edited by James T. Fields.

Though Emerson noted a concern about slavery early in his life, he was not an active Abolitionist early on. In fact, in 1856, when fellow Bostonian Charles Sumner was beaten for his strong anti-slavery stance in the U.S. Senate, Emerson lamented that he was not as committed to the cause. Soon, however, he concluded, "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom." Even so, he rarely acted on his abolitionist views in the same way as his friends Bronson Alcott and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson.