Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852-1944)

C. E. S. Wood ca. 1877

Charles Erskine Scott Wood led a life that can only be described as extraordinary. As one of the most influential figures in Portland, Oregon, at the turn of the twentieth century, he helped establish the Portland Art Museum, the Portland Rose Festival, and was instrumental in the creation of a free Multnomah County Library System. A Soldier, Lawyer, Author, Poet, Painter, and self-described anarchist, Wood has been called “the most interesting man in Oregon history.” [1] He little known today, but is perhaps best remembered for his role in immortalizing the surrender speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe in 1877.

C. E. S. Wood, as he was commonly known, was the son of Rose Mary Carson and William Maxwell Scott Wood, the first surgeon-general of the United States Navy. He was born on February 20, 1852, in Erie, Pennsylvania, and received his childhood education at the Erie Academy. He eventually enrolled in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from which he graduated in 1874, at the age of twenty-two. He spent the next ten years of his life as a lieutenant in the United States Army.

In June 1877, while on an expedition in Alaska, Wood was called back to Oregon to join his company in pursuit of the Nez Perce Indians, who were fleeing to Canada to avoid being confined to a reservation in Idaho. Wood was an aid to General O. O. Howard, and on October 5, 1877, was present at the surrender of Chief Joseph in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana. He recorded this speech as told to an interpreter, although some modern scholars suggest Wood may have embellished it.

Wood later said: “Neither General [Nelson A.] Miles [who was also present at the surrender] nor anyone else knows Joseph’s long surrender speech accurately except myself. No one was interested to take it down. Oscar Long, Miles regimental adjutant, was there to take it down but did not. No one was told to take it down. I was not told. The speeches of Indians were not considered important. I took it for my own benefit as a literary item.” [2] It has since become one of the famous utterances of any Native American, remembered for its oft-quoted last line, “I will fight no more forever.” The speech was published in various newspapers at the time, including the Bismarck (North Dakota) Tribune.

Wood was married the following year to Nanny [or Nannie] Moale Smith and brought her back to Fort Vancouver, where he was stationed. Their first child, Erskine, was born in 1879. The couple would eventually have five more children together. Their daughter, Nan, would later become the first congresswoman from the state of Oregon.

After General Howard was appointed superintendent of the United States Military Academy, Wood returned to West Point to work as his adjutant. During this period of his life, Wood befriended Mark Twain, who often visited the academy at West Point. After finding out that Wood had access to the academy printing press, Twain persuaded him to print an edition of fifty copies of his controversial work 1601, which was then considered obscene (and therefore published anonymously). This edition is now known as the “West Point edition.”

Wood studied law at Columbia University and graduated in 1883. He returned to Portland, Oregon, where he practiced law for the next thirty-five years. Perhaps through his oratory experience as a lawyer, Wood developed a reputation as great speaker. According to a writer for the magazine Sunset, “Men in Portland who agree with him, men who disagree with him, men who know him only at a distance, unite in the assertion that C. E. S. Wood is possessed of great legal acumen, is a convincing pleader at the bar, and the most brilliant after-dinner speaker they have ever listened to, bar none.” [3]

Through Clarence Darrow, Wood was introduced to Sara Bard Field Ergott in 1910, and the two began a life-long love affair. He and Sara moved to San Francisco in 1919, and the following year purchased a thirty acre estate at Los Gatos, at which they erected two large cat statues (to the dismay of many of their neighbors). The two eventually married in 1938, five years after the death of Wood’s first wife.
Wood died on January 22, 1944, one month shy of his 92nd birthday.

As a writer Wood was extremely versatile, contributing both prose and poetry to the Pacific Monthly, the Century, and other magazines and newspapers. His first published book, A Book of Tales (1901) was a collection of Native American myths. Several collections of poetry followed, the most ambitious being the free verse The Poet in the Deseret (1915, revised in 1918 and again in 1929). His most successful work was a collection of satirical essays titled Heavenly Discourses (1927).

*Note: Some of Wood’s best poems were written in his later years, and are not in the public domain, so could not be included here. These include: “Thick-Necked Horses,” “Sun Worshiper,” “Goats,” and “A Day in April.” As the editors of Wood Works noted, “It is interesting that so many of Woods lyrics, including many of his finest, were not published in his lifetime, appearing for the first time in Collected Poems in 1949.” [4]

First Snow

The cows are bawling in the mountains.
The snowflakes fall.
They are leaving the pools and pebbled fountains:
Troubled—they bawl.
They are winding down the mountain’s shoulders
Through the open pines.
The wild rose thickets and the granite boulders
In broken lines.
Each calf trots close beside its mother
And so they go,
Bawling and calling to one another
About the snow.

Published in Literary Review of the New York Evening Post, December 22, 1923; reprinted in the Albany (Oregon) Democrat, January 6, 1924; Lariat, February 1924; and Poems from the Ranges (1929)

Sonnet LIX

Once more I am by Ocean’s breezes fed,
….And watch the foam-sheets creep upon the shore,
….Hear the sea-lion’s hoarse and guttural roar,
The sad complaint of seagulls overhead.
Once more I thrill with wondering awe and dread
….Of this great Ocean, which for evermore
….Has poured its curling thunder, and shall pour,
For oh so long, after we all are dead.
I mark the courage of the wind-swept pines,
….Their hair blown back from off their twisted brows
….By many a bout when wild the winds carouse.
Illimitable the wide Immortal shines;
….Only the sea has an eternal house.

At Ecola, August 27, 1904

Published in Sonnets (1918)

I Have Seen War

I have seen War.
I have heard it.
I have smelled it.
Even now I am waked from dreams
By the stink of bodies
Three days dead under the sun.
Maggots filled their mouths
And flies crawled over their eyeballs,
Buzzing up angrily as we threw
Manhood into the pit of putrefaction.
Weeds will grow upon the lips of lovers
And grass flourish out of the hearts of fathers,
But the father and the lover
Will return no more.

This poem was originally untitled, and appears in the journal of C. E. S. Wood under the date June 27, 1877. [see George Venn, “Soldier to Advocate: C. E. S. Wood’s 1877 Diary of Alaska and the Nez Perce Conflict,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 106, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), 65-66.] Wood later included this poem in The Poet in the Desert (1918 edition), p. 94. The above excerpt is printed as it was published in the magazine Freedom, February 1924.

from  The Poet in the Desert

Behold the signs of the Desert:
The stagnant water-hole, trampled with hoofs;
About it shine the white bones of those
Who came too late.
A whirling dust-pillar, waltz of Wind and Earth;
Glistening black walls of obsidian
Where the wild tribes fashioned their arrowheads.
The ground with fragments is strewn,
Just as they dropped them,
The strokes of the makers undimmed
Through the dumb and desperate years;
But the hunters have gone forever.
The Desert cares no more for the death of these
Than for the death of the armies of crawling crickets.
Dazzling in the sun, whiter than snow, I see the bones
Of those who have existed as I now exist.
The bones are here. Where are they who lived?
A thin veil of gnats buzz their hour.
I know that they are my brothers, and I
Less than the dial-shadow of this rock,
For the shadow returns forever.

Silence, invincible; impregnable;
Compelling the soul to stand forth
And be questioned.
Night overwhelms me.
Coyotes bark to the stars.
Upon the midnight sand I lie,
Thoughtfully sifting the earth
Through my fingers.
I am that dust.
I look up to the stars,
Knowing to them my life is not
More valuable than that of the flowers;
The little, delicate flowers of the Desert,
Which, like a breath, catch at the hem of Spring
And are gone.

From The Poet in the Desert (1918 edition)

XXIII

I sought God in the caverns of the Ages,
But they were empty.
I pushed aside the tapestries of the Night
And rudely tore down the star-sown arras of the years,
But found only desolation.
I loosed my soul upon the backward path of Eternity,
But it was lost in the mists,
And I was frightened by the silence.
I stood upon the purple peaks
And sought to pierce the clouds of Being,
But was dizzy with the infinite.
I called into the impenetrable vacancy,
And was not answered.
No voice I heard; I saw no hand; no face.
My soul rent the veil before the sanctuary of the clouds
And rushed in with the rebellious lightning,
But there was nothing.
I shod my spirit with the winged slippers of the Wind,
And pried curiously into every corner.
All was emptiness and a great stillness.
I seized the Sun by his burning tresses and questioned him,
But he was without knowledge.
I clung to the chariot-wheels of the Stars
But was flung back to earth; and they passed on.
Then I knew there is no God.

From The Poet in the Desert (1915 edition) [This section of the poem is numbered XLIV in the 1918 edition]

Sonnet LXXI

Once more I lie upon the grassy spot
….Where, years gone by, we pitched our summer tent,
….My sons and I; it cannot be forgot;
Here was the shaded path by which we went
….Down to the little beach and rippled pond
Of our friendly river; strokes our axes left
….Where we chopped out a bower in willows cool;
Now silent, of their restless youth bereft
….The sun still shines as bright; the river flows
As murmurous as when it soothed our sleep;
….Here was their bed, where the rose-brier grows,
Not anything for long our impress keeps.
….They all have gone their ways, and, close to tears,
….I muse upon the veiled and hurrying years.

Blitzen River, September 9, 1912

Published in Sonnets (1918)

Silent Days

The birds have fled,
Snatching as they went a morsel from
The lean, brown fingers of the haggard year.
The leaves are dead.
No more the air is fretted with the wings of beetles;
Birds no more flutter; no clicking of grasshoppers.
Withered stalks have shed their seeds.
Wild roses stand by the pebbled rills
And tell their beads.

Published in West Winds: An anthology of verse by members of the California Writers Club (1925)

A Fragment

On this high mountain cliff,
Which once the sea waves tore,
A fluted shell, frail blossom of that timeless shore.
I shall pass, I and all my braggart thought,
As dies on space a sounding bell;
But here on this dead shore, in the great lap caught,
A little fluted shell.

Published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, February 1924

Sonnet LVIII

Why should death haunt us? When It comes it will.
….As life, too, came. For us the here and now
….Is all in all. The summer roses spill
….Their beauty like bright prodigals, nor how
They come or go they question; the wise bees
….Work on till death; brooks flow unto the tide
Without lament. Shall we be less than these?
….The halls of Night in grandeur open wide
To show, each day, man’s brief infirmity.
….Come, let us live our time serenely through,
In calm obedience to our destiny;
….Life is a mystery, needing courage too.
Think not of death, but in your living give
The world rejoicing that a soul has lived.

Published in Maia. A Sonnet Sequence (1918)

Notes:

[1] Tim Barnes, “C. E. S. Wood (1852-1944),” Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/c_e_s_wood/#.Yl8m4NPMLIU

[2] Elmo Scott Watson, “Death of 91-Year-old California author recalls how he, as a young army lieutenant, recorded for posterity famous speech of a great indian chief,” Cache American (Logan, Utah), March 28, 1944, 2.

[3] Frances A. Groff, “Western Personalities: A Philosopher at large,” Sunset: the Pacific Monthly 28, no. 2 (February 1912): 232-234.

[4] Edward Bingham and Tim Barnes, Wood Works: the life and writings of Charles Erskine Scott Wood (Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 1997), 314

Biographical Sources:

“Lieut C. E. S. Wood, U. S. A.,” Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), December 13, 1878, 1

“Born,” Vancouver (Washington) Independent, September 4, 1879, 5

“United States Census, 1920,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHWT-T6Y : 31 January 2021), Sara Bard Field in entry for Chas Erskine Scott Wood, 1920.

“A Portlander’s Controversy,” Oregon Daily Journal, December 26, 1921, 10

Keith Moerer, “The Legend of C.E.S. Wood, Portland’s Anarchist Founding Father,” Willamette Week, September 17, 1984
https://www.wweek.com/archive/2021/01/30/the-legend-of-c-e-s-wood-portlands-anarchist-founding-father/

Edward Bingham and Tim Barnes, Wood Works: the life and writings of Charles Erskine Scott Wood (Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 1997), 1-40.

Catharine Beecher (1800-1878)

Catharine Beecher, as published in the Woman’s Record by Sarah Josepha Hale (3rd edition, 1874)

Catharine Esther Beecher was the eldest of the Reverend Lyman Beecher’s thirteen children, and one of the most prominent in a celebrated family whose other members included writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. Catharine Beecher was a prolific writer, but it is her role as an educator (and her efforts to improve education for women) for which she is remembered today.

She was born at East Hampton, Long Island, New York, on September 6, 1800. At the age of nine her family moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, and Catharine was educated at the Litchfield Female Academy. From an early age she displayed a talent for music, and according to a journalist with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “she was trained by competent masters until she became a fine singer and skillful pianist.” (“A remarkable family,” May 12, 1878). Her goal was to become a music teacher.

Catharine’s life was changed dramatically in 1816—at sixteen years of age—when her mother died. It became her responsibility, as the oldest, to help care for her eight younger siblings. She helped run the household until her father remarried the following year.

Catharine began writing poetry as a young girl. Her first published poems appeared under the initials “C. B.” and “C. D. D.” in the Christian Spectator, a monthly religious newspaper published at New Haven, Connecticut. According to her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, these poems attracted the notice of Alexander Metcalf Fisher, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Yale College. Fisher was eager to make the acquaintance of this talented young writer, and eventually the two became engaged. They were to be married in 1823, after Fisher returned from a trip to Europe. However, on April 22, 1822, his ship wrecked during a storm off the south coast of Ireland, and he drowned. Catharine was deeply affected by this event and devoted the remainder of her life to the education of women. She never married.

In 1823, with her sister Mary, she founded the Female Hartford Seminary, over which she presided for the next seven years. Her school was pioneering in that it offered a full range of subjects, such as Mathematics, Philosophy, Geography, Grammar, Rhetoric, Science and Literature, rather than just fine arts and languages (which was customary with female schools at the time), and was intended for young women who intended to “pursue the higher branches of female education.” (“Female School,” Hartford Courant, April 29, 1823, [4]) Beecher also introduced physical education for women into the curriculum. After seven years of continual labor at the school, her health began to fail, and she suffered several attacks of sciatica. Ultimately, Beecher left the school in charge of an associate teacher, Mr. John Brace.

In October 1832, Beecher moved west with her father and his family to Cincinnati, Ohio, when the Reverend Beecher became president of Lane Theological Seminary. In Cincinnati Catharine founded another school for young ladies, the Western Female Institute. However, this school closed after only five years.

Beecher spent the next few years traveling and lecturing. In 1852 she founded the American Woman’s Educational Association, which sent school teachers out West and founded new schools on the American frontier. Female seminaries were established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in Dubuque, Iowa, and throughout the state of Illinois.

Thereafter, Beecher spent much of the latter part of her life devoted to writing. She died in Elmira, New York, on May 12, 1878, at the residence of her brother, the Reverend Thomas Kinnicut Beecher.

Catharine Beecher’s published books cover a variety of topics, including mathematics, philosophy, education, and slavery, but her most famous works were those devoted to domestic subjects: A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), The Duty of American Women to Their Country (1845), The Domestic Receipt Book (1846) [a book of recipes], and The American Woman’s Home (1869), the latter written with her younger sister Harriet Beecher Stowe. Catharine Beecher wrote much poetry during her lifetime, but she never published a collection of her verse, and it is presumed that many of her poems are now lost. The following have only recently been discovered.

New Year’s Eve

Midnight lowers, strange wailing voices
Moan around, dim forms pass by,
Low complainings, dismal visions,
Drink my spirit, drown my eye.

Rising tall from gloomy darkness,
See yon glimmering shade appear,
Ah! I know thy mournful tokens,
Spirit of the parting year!

Pale her form, her long dark tresses,
On the night wind float along,
Wild her bearing, sad her wailing,
List, and hear her parting song.

“Earth, I leave thee! world of wonders,
Is it ever thus thy years
Meet thee, drest in smiles and blessings,
Pass away in sighs and tears?

“Heaven hath crowned thee, and with mercies,
Studded rich thy diadem;
Guilty man hath cast it from thee,
Dimmed the gold, and soiled each gem.

“Man, immortal, heir of Heaven,
Image of his God below,
Spurns his blessings, sells his birth-right,
Turns each promised joy to woe.

“Blood-eyed War mows down his victims;
Slavery weeps o’er chains that bind,
Passion shakes his iron scourges,
Vice enthralls th’ immortal mind.

“Care hath made her dwelling with thee,
Pain and sickness, sad complain,
Pining sorrow blasts each blossom,
Death fills up the mournful train.

“See the new-born year appearing,
On the breeze her warblings swell,
Hark! the midnight bell, deep-tolling,
Sounds my exit; Earth, farewell!”

Swift she fled; then bright as morning,
Forth a light-winged seraph springs,
From her blue eye, speaking gladness,
Hope looks forth, while thus she sings.
“Hail, fair world! how bright thy shore!
How sweet thy scenes! how rich thy store!
For thee, boon Nature decks her skies,
And moons return and planets rise,
And Morning smiles, with dewy eye,
And Evening paints the western sky.
For thee, young Spring, with spicy gale,
Spreads life and freshness thro’ the vale,
And summer’s richer tints are born,
And autumn fills her golden horn.
For thee, the glowing landscape smiles
With ocean’s waves and emerald Isles,
While mountains lift their heads of snow,
And peaceful lakelets sleep below,
With quiet grove, and murmuring brook,
And dewy lawn, and shady nook,
Where sigh the Zephyrs thro’ the willow,
And mingle with the flowing billow.
Among thy shades, White peace is seen,
And plenty laughs in hamlets green,
And Commerce spreads her snowy sail,
And Freedom’s song floats on the gale.
For thee, fair Science heaps her store,
And hoary Learning spreads his lore,
While sweet Affection comes to bless,
With winning smile and kind caress,
And Love, whose purest joys are given,
Sweet emblems of the bliss of Heaven.
In all, thy Maker’s hand appears,
Who, changeless, guides thy circling years,
And leads thee with Eternal love,
To seek for brighter joys above?”

First published (without title) in the Connecticut Observer (Hartford), January 4, 1825. It was later revised and published with the present title in the Christian Keepsake and Missionary Annual (1840), when Beecher was living in Walnut Hills, Ohio. “The New Year” later appeared in Thomas Buchanan Read’s Female Poets of America (1849).

[Untitled]

I waked from troubled sleep, for visions sad,
And doleful sounds, and wildering darkness drear
Disturbed my rest.—Around ‘twas quiet all;
Grey morn scarce glinted for her earliest tint,
The birds of night had ceased their plaintive wail,
The lark yet slumbered in her grassy seat,
When gleaming, thro’ my opening curtain seen,
The morning star its quiet lustre shed.
The silent wanderer on the pathless sky
Seemed watching my lone pillow, and me thought,
Soft as its silver ray, it whispered peace.
“Sleep, child of Earth! the hand that guides my way
Thro’ the blue fields of ether, guards thy rest.
While nature slumbers that Paternal hand
Blesses and keeps—It sheds the pearly dew
Distilling soft o’er all the quiet scene;
It guards the folded flock, and slumbering herd,
And timid hind that sleeps in dewy glen;—
By the low sedgy pool, it saves from harm
The bittern’s nest, and guards the sparrow’s young.
The tiny insect, too, with folded wing,
Seeks its appointed rest, secure from ill.
Then rest thee, mind immortal, born to shine
When my dim nightly spark will gleam no more;
Heaven guards thy rest with a peculiar care,
And bids thee trust that Love that slumbers not,
But ever keeps thy Rising and thy Rest.”

Published in the Connecticut Observer, January 25, 1825.

To the Monatropa, or Ghost Flower

Pale, mournful flower that hid’st in shade,
Mid marshy damps and murky glade
……………………….With moss and mould,
Why dost thou hang thy ghastly head,
……………………….So pale and cold?

No brightness on thy petal gleams,
Gone the fresh hue of living greens,
……………………….And balmy breath;
Thy cold and livid covering seems
……………………….The garb of Death.

Do ills that wring the human breast
The blooming buds of Spring infest,
……………………….And fade their bloom?
And bend they too, with griefs opprest,
……………………….To the cold tomb?

Is thy pale bosom chill’d with woe?
Has treachery hush’d the genial flow
……………………….Of life’s young morn?
Have all who wak’d thy bosom’s glow
……………………….Left thee forlorn?

Perchance the wailing night-bird’s song,
That mortal woes and griefs prolong,
……………………….At midnight hour,
Wakes thy full throb of feeling strong,
……………………….With thrilling power.

Perchance thy paly earth-bowed head
Is bending now above the dead,
……………………….With dewy eye,
Soft moaning o’er thy treasures fled,
……………………….In evening’s sigh.

And thus thou speak’st to Reason’s ear;
“In every scene grief will appear
……………………….And death’s cold hour,
As springs ‘mid beauties of the year,
……………………….One pale sad flower.”

First published in the Connecticut Observer, August 16, 1825. Later revised and published as “The Monatropa or Ghost-Flower” in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1840 (published in 1839). In this collection she introduced her poem with the following:
“The Monatropa is a singular little plant, that grows in damp and shaded places. It has a slender, white stalk, clasped with white leaves and one white flower, whose single petal hangs drooping. The incident that occasioned these lines may give them some interest. Leonisa W. was one whose story was a romance in real life. Admired, caressed, and beloved, she seemed like the sunshine of the scene in which she moved. But she sunk to the grave a victim of faithless love. Homeless, sick, an orphan, and destitute, a few months before her death, as the sun was just setting, she alighted with a friend at the entrance of a wood. In a deep little dell she espied this solitary flower. “Poor thing!” said she, “it looks as if it had lost all!” She plucked it, and giving it to her friend, “Write some poetry about it for me,” said she. The following came, in obedience to the request.”
Also published in Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman’s Record: Or, Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from “the Beginning” till A. D. 1850 (1853).

In Memoriam

Sad was the morning of the day
….That saw our fairest flower laid low.
The weeping heavens were hungry with clouds
….As nature seemed to feel our woe.

Oh, hard the task to human heart
….To yield the dear and lovely clay,
Tho’ death had chilled each moving grace
….And swept expression’s charm away.

We laid him in his infant grave,
….The fairest form of earthly mould,
Death ne’er could find a sweeter flower
….To deck his bosom stern and cold.

Now oft kind memory’s faithful hand
….Shall lead him smiling to our view,
Recount his pretty prattling ways
….To wring our hearts, yet soothe them too.

Dear cherished child, tho’ few the days
….To cheer our hearts thou here wast given,
When earth is past, thy cherub smile
….Shall sweetly welcome us to heaven.

This poem was written in June 1820 after the death of her two-year-old brother Frederick (“little Freddy”), of scarlet fever. It is uncertain if this poem was published at the time it was written, but it was later included in Autobiography, Correspondence, Etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D. (1865), and published in the Christian Union (New York), May 3, 1876.

The Evening Cloud

See yonder cloud along the west,
In gay fantastic splendor dress’d;
Fancy’s bright visions charm the eye,
Sweet fairy bowers in prospect lie,
And blooming fields smile from the sky
Decked in the hues of Even!
But short its evanescent stay,
Its brilliant masses fade away,
The breeze floats off its visions gay,
And clears the face of Heaven.

Thus to fond man does Life’s fair scene
Delusive spread its cheerful green.
Before his path shine Pleasure’s bowers,
Each smiling field seems dress’d in flowers,
Hope leads him on, and shows his hours
For Peace and Pleasure given—
But one by one his hopes decay,
Each flattering vision fades away,
Each cheering scene charms to betray,
And naught remains but Heaven.

Published in the Christian Spectator, February 1820. Also published in Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman’s Record: Or, Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from “the Beginning” till A. D. 1850 (1853).

The following poem was published under the initials C. E. B., but I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that Beecher is the author:

Psalm CXXXIX

Father! to Thee my inmost thoughts, as to myself, are known,
Asleep, awake, in life, in death, I cannot be alone,
I cannot be alone.
I cannot breathe a secret word, which Thou, Lord, dost not hear;
In danger’s hour my God is nigh; I need not, will not fear.
I know that Thou art with me now—yet how I cannot say—
Before, behind, on every side, protecting every way.
Where can I go to hide from Thee, my Heavenly Father, where?
Ascend to heaven, or sink to hell? Behold! my God is there.
O could I take the wings of light, and seek the farthest wave,
As soon my Father’s hand would move my trembling form to save,
Or should I think my sins to hide beneath the veil of night,
Thy presence would the cloud dispel, and darkness turn to light.
……*………*….…..*…….*………*………*………*………*
O search me, Lord! and know my thoughts, forbid my feet to stray,
But lead me from the paths of sin to everlasting day.

Published in the Monthly Miscellany of Religion and Letters, April 1843

Notes:

*One of Catharine Beecher’s early Christian Spectator poems, originally published under the initials “C. D. D.,” was later republished under the name “Clio” in the Cincinnati Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (see October, 1833, p. 466). It is not known if she used any other pseudonyms.
*Additional poems by Beecher can be found in Autobiography, Correspondence, Etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D. (1865), and in Our Famous Women (1884).
*The thirteen children of the Rev. Lyman Beecher are as follows:
Catharine Esther Beecher (1800-1878)[note: her first name is sometimes spelled Catherine]; Rev. William Henry Beecher (1802-1889); Rev. Edward Beecher (1803-1895); Mrs. Mary Foote Beecher Perkins (1805-1900); Harriet Beecher (1808-1808); Rev. George Beecher (1809-1843); Mrs. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811-1896); Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887); Rev. Charles Beecher (1815-1900); Frederick C. Beecher (1818-1820); Mrs. Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907); Rev. Thomas Kinnicut Beecher (1824-1900); and Rev. James Chaplin Beecher (1828-1886)

Biographical Sources:

“Misses C. & M Beecher,” Connecticut Observer (Hartford, Conn), March 29, 1825, [3]

“Female School,” Hartford (Connecticut) Courant, April 29, 1823, [4]

“Harford Female Seminary,” Connecticut Observer, April 23, 1832, 68 [4]

“Beecher’s Arithmetic,” Connecticut Observer, October 1, 1832, 158 [2]

C. E. B. [Catharine E. Beecher],“The Emigrant’s Farewell” (poem), Connecticut Observer, October 29, 1832, 175 [3]

“Obituary” [Catharine E. Beecher], Philadelphia Inquirer, May 11, 1878, [1]

“A Remarkable Family,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 12, 1878, [4]

“Catharine Esther Beecher,” Passaic City (New Jersey) Daily News, May 13, 1878, 2.

“The Beecher Family,” Philadelphia Times, March 9, 1887, [2]

John S. Hart, The Female Prose Writers of America. With portraits, biographical notices, and specimens of their writings, 3rd edition, revised and enlarged (Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co., 1857), 275-276.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Catherine E. Beecher,” in Our Famous Women: An Authorized Record of the Lives and Deeds of Distinguished American Women of Our Times (Hartford, Conn: A. D. Worthington & Co., 1884), 75-93.

Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century: fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life (Buffalo, New York: Charles Wells Moulton, 1893), 70-71.

“Catherine E. Beecher (1800-1878),” Portraits of American Women Writers, accessed June 15, 2019. http://librarycompany.org/women/portraits/beecher.htm

Debra Michals, “Catherine Esther Beecher,” National Women’s History Museum, accessed June 15, 2019. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/catharine-esther-beecher

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Griswold’s Female Poets of America, 1878 edition.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a prolific writer of both verse and prose, but she is primarily remembered today for her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All of her other writings, but especially her poems, have been unjustly overshadowed by her most famous work, and are long-forgotten.

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher, the seventh of thirteenth children of the Reverend Lyman Beecher and his wife Roxana Foote, was born on June 14, 1811, at Litchfield, Connecticut. When Harriet was five years old her mother died, and she was placed in the care of her grandmother at Guilford, Connecticut. She was educated at the Litchfield academy and in 1824 went to Harford, Connecticut, to attend the school for young women founded by her elder sister Catharine. Upon her graduation, Harriet became a full time teacher at her sister’s school, teaching classes in rhetoric and composition.

In October 1832 she moved with her father and his family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where she taught school for two years at the Western Female Institute, another school founded by her sister Catharine.

In early 1836 Harriet married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor of Languages and Biblical Literature at Lane Theological Seminary. Together they had seven children: twins Harriet Beecher and Eliza were born September 29, 1836 and named after their mother and Professor Stowe’s first wife Eliza Tyler (who died in 1834), respectively; Henry Ellis was born in Cincinnati on January 14, 1838, and drowned at Hanover, New Hampshire on July 9, 1857, while a student at Dartmouth College; Frederick William was born on May 6, 1840, and later fought in the Civil.War, before disappearing while sailing to San Francisco circa 1870; Georgiana May was born May 25, 1843, and married the Rev. Henry Freeman in 1865; Samuel Charles, born in January 1848, died of cholera on July 26, 1849; and Charles Edward Stowe, born July 8, 1850 in Brunswick, Maine, later became a minister.

In 1850 Calvin Stowe accepted a professorship of Revealed and Natural Religion at Bowdoin College, and moved his family to Brunswick, Maine. After two years he resigned to take the chair of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts. They lived in Andover until 1864, when Professor Stowe resigned his professorship, due to his poor health, and removed to Harford, Connecticut. For nearly twenty years afterward they spent the summer months in Hartford, and resided in Mandarin, Florida, during the winter, until Calvin Stowe’s failing health made travel difficult. He died on August 22, 1886.

After her husband’s death, Stowe’s health declined rapidly, and she suffered from severe dementia. She died on July 1, 1896, at age eighty-five, in Hartford, Connecticut, and was buried next to her husband in the Philips Academy Cemetery at Andover, Massachusetts.

Stowe’s most famous work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was written in Brunswick, Maine, and first published in weekly installments in the National Era, an abolitionist newspaper published at Washington, D. C. Its original title, according to an announcement in the May 8, 1851 issue of the National Era was Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or the Man that was a Thing. Before the first installment appeared one month later, on June 5, 1851, the title was slightly modified to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly. The story ran weekly from June 5, 1851 to April 1, 1852, and was published in book form on March 20, 1852, two weeks before it had completed its run in the National Era. During the first year of publication, it is estimated that more than 500,000 copies were sold in the United States, and one million copies were sold in England. Before the end of the first year the book was translated into more than twenty languages. Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought Stowe instant fame, but also angered many in the South. According to the Philadelphia Times, “Mrs. Stowe was for a time the most hated woman in the United States.” (March 9, 1887.)

Stowe’s stories and poems also appeared in the Independent, the New England Evangelist, and the Atlantic Monthly. Her first book, The Mayflower, or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrilms, was a collection of her short stories and was published in 1843. Her other works include The Minister’s Wooing (1859) and Old Town Folks (1869). Three of her poems, previously published in the Independent, were included in the Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes; for the use of Christian congregations (1855), a collection of hymns compiled and edited by Stowe’s brother, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. A selection of Stowe’s Religious Poems was published in 1867.

The Moral Hero

Suggested by the late Speech in Congress of Mr. Giddings, and more especially by its closing passage.

The thirst of Fame inspires the soul-lit page,
….And bids the canvas glow, the marble breathe;
….O, Immortality! thy burning wreath
Hath lured the human soul through every age!
Nor vain the hope, even in this earthly stage;
….Nor aught, even here, save virtue, gives the crown!
….‘Twas twined for Phocion, Cato, ‘neath the frown
Of fortune, and the fickle people’s rage,
And brighter blooms while sculpture falls to dust.
….Even thus, O Giddings! shall it deck thy brow,
While all earth’s marble piles betray their trust:
….Yon “Modern Capitol” to time must bow—
But bravely, sternly, “obstinately just,”
….A victor of the immortal heights art thou!

Published in the National Era on September 23, 1852. This is the second of four poems labeled “Sonnets for the times.” The first of these was published on September 16, 1852, and indicates it was written by “The author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Although none of the other “Sonnets for the times” list an author name, the Index to Volume VI of the National Era, in the December 30, 1852 issue, names “Mrs. Stowe” as their author.
Joshua R. Giddings was a Republican from Ohio who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1838-1859. He was fiercely opposed to slavery.

Peace in God

“Let my soul calm itself in Thee; I say, let the great sea of my soul that swelleth with waves calm itself in Thee.”—St. Augustine.

Life’s mystery—deep, restless as the ocean—
….Hath surged and wailed for ages to and fro;
Earth’s generations watch its ceaseless motion,
….As in and out its hollow moanings flow;
Shivering and yearning by that unknown sea,
Let my soul calm itself, oh Christ, in Thee!

Life’s sorrows, with inexorable power,
….Sweep desolation o’er this mortal plain;
And human loves and hopes fly as the chaff
….Borne by the whirlwind from the ripened grain;—
Ah, when before that blast my hopes all flee,
Let my soul calm itself, oh Christ, in Thee!

Between the mysteries of death and life
….Thou standest, loving, guiding—not explaining;
We ask, and thou art silent—yet we gaze,
….And our charmed hearts forget their drear complaining!
No crushing fate—no stony destiny!
Thou Lamb that hast been slain, we rest in Thee!

The many waves of thought, the mighty tides,
….The ground swell that rolls up from other lands,
From far-off worlds, from dim, eternal shores
….Whose echo dashes on life’s wave-worn strands—
This vague dark tumult of the inner sea
Grows calm, grows bright, oh, risen Lord, in Thee!

Thy pierced hand guides the mysterious wheels;
….Thy thorn-crowned brow now wears the crown of power;
And when the dark enigma presseth sore
….Thy patient voice saith, “Watch with me one hour.”
As sinks the moaning river in the sea
In silver peace—so sinks my soul in Thee!

Andover, August 1.

Published in the Independent, August 5, 1858, and signed by her initials “H. B. S.” It was later renamed “The Mystery of Life” when reprinted in Religious Poems (1867).

Midnight

“He hath made me to dwell in darkness as those that have been long dead.”

All dark!—no light, no ray!
Sun, moon, and stars, all gone!
Dimness of anguish!— utter void!—
……….Crushed, and alone!

One waste of weary pain,
One dull, unmeaning ache,
A heart too weary, even to throb,
……….Too bruised to break.

No longer anxious thoughts,
No longer hopes and fears,
No strife, no effort, no desire,
……….No tears?

Daylight and leaves and flowers,
Summer and song of bird!—
All vanished!—dreams forever gone,
……….Unseen, unheard!

Love, beauty, youth,—all gone!
The high, heroic vow,
The buoyant hope, the fond desire,—
……….All ashes now!

The words they speak to me
Far off and distant seem,
As voices we have known and loved
……….Speak in a dream.

They bid me to submit;
I do,—I cannot strive;
I do not question, —I endure,
……….Endure and live.

I do not struggle more,
Nor pray, for prayer is vain;
I but lie still the weary hour,
……….And bear my pain.

A guiding God, a Friend,
A Father’s gracious cheer,
Once seemed my own; but now even faith
……….Lies buried here.

This darkened, deathly life
Is all remains of me,
And but one conscious wish,—
……….To cease to be!

Published in Religious Poems (1867). It is not certain if this poem was previously published elsewhere.

When I Awake I am Still With Thee

Still, still with Thee—when purple morning breaketh,
….When the bird waketh and the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight,
….Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee!

Alone with Thee—amid the mystic shadows,
….The solemn hush of nature newly born;
Alone with Thee in breathless adoration,
….In the calm dew and freshness of the morn.

As in the dawning, o’er the waveless ocean,
….The image of the morning star doth rest,
So in this stillness, Thou beholdest only
….Thine image in the waters of my breast.

Still, still with Thee! as to each new-born morning
….A fresh and solemn splendor still is given,
So doth this blessed consciousness awaking,
….Breathe, each day, nearness unto Thee and Heaven.

When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber,
….Its closing eye looks up to Thee in prayer,
Sweet the repose beneath thy wings o’ershading,
….But sweeter still, to wake and find Thee there.

So shall it be at last, in that bright morning
….When the soul waketh, and life’s shadows flee;
Oh! in that hour, fairer than daylight dawning,
….Shall rise the glorious thought, l am with Thee!

Brunswick, Aug.30

Published in the Independent, September 9, 1852, and signed with Stowe’s initials “H. E. B. S.” “Still,Still with Thee,” as it is often printed, is one of Stowe’s best known poems, and was republished in Stowe’s The May Flower: and Miscellaneous Writings (1855) and Religious Poems (1867). It is also one of three poems by Stowe to appear in the Plymouth Collection of Hymns (1855). Shortly after it was first published it was set to music by her brother, the Reverend Charles Beecher (see “New Music,” Morning Chronicle [London, England], November 18, 1852, [1]).

The Miserere

Not of the earth that music! all things fade;
Vanish the pictured walls! and, one by one,
The starry candles silently expire!

And now, O Jesus! round that silent cross
A moment’s pause, a hush as of the grave.
Now rises slow a silver mist of sound,
And all the heavens break out in drops of grief;
A rain of sobbing sweetness, swelling, dying,
Voice into voice inweaving with sweet throbs,
And fluttering pulses of impassioned moan,—
Veiled voices, in whose wailing there is awe,
And mysteries of love and agony,
A yearning anguish of celestial souls,
A shiver as of wings trembling the air,
As if God’s shining doves, his spotless birds,
Wailed with a nightingale’s heart-break of grief,
In this their starless night, when for our sins
Their sun, their life, their love, hangs darkly there,
Like a slain lamb, bleeding his life away!

Published in Religious Poems (1867).

The Crocus

Beneath the sunny autumn sky,
….With gold leaves dropping round,
We sought, my little friend and I,
….The consecrated ground,
Where calm beneath the holy cross,
….O’ershadowed by sweet skies,
Sleeps tranquilly that youthful form,
….Those blue unclouded eyes.

Around the soft green swelling mound
….We scooped the earth away,
And buried deep the crocus bulbs
….Against a coming day.
“These roots are dry, and brown, and sere,
….Why plant them here?” he said,
“To leave them all the winter long,
….So desolate and dead.”

“Dear child, within each sere dead form
….There sleeps a living flower,
And angel-like it shall arise
….In spring’s returning hour.”
Ah, deeper down—cold, dark, and chill,
….We buried our heart’s flower,
But angel-like shall he arise
….In spring’s immortal hour.

In blue and yellow from its grave
….Springs up the crocus fair,
And God shall raise those bright blue eyes
….Those sunny waves of hair.
Not for a fading summer’s morn,
….Not for a fleeting hour,
But for an endless age of bliss,
….Shall rise our heart’s dear flower.

Published in the Independent, February 18, 1858. Reprinted in Religious Poems (1867).

Christ’s Voice in the Soul

“Come ye yourselves into a desert place and rest awhile,—for there were many coming and going, so that they had no time, so much as to eat.”

Mid the mad whirl of life, its dim confusion,
….Its jarring discords and poor vanity,
Breathing like music over troubled waters,
….What gentle voice, O Christian, speaks to thee?

It is a stranger—not of earth or earthly;
….By the serene, deep fullness of that eye,—
By the calm, pitying smile, the gesture lowly,—-
….It is thy Savior as he passeth by.

Come, come, he saith, into a desert place,
….Thou who art weary of life’s lower sphere;
Leave its low strifes, forget its babbling noise,
….Come thou with me—all shall be bright and clear.

Art thou bewildered by contesting voices,
….Sick to thy soul of party noise and strife?
Come, leave it all, and seek that solitude
….Where thou shalt learn of me a purer life.

When far behind the world’s great tumult dieth,
….Thou shalt look back and wonder at its roar;
But its far voice shall seem to thee a dream,
….Its power to vex thy holier life be o’er.

Then shalt thou learn the secret of a power,
….Mine to bestow, which heals the ills of living,
To overcome by love—to live by prayer,
….To conquer man’s worst evils by forgiving.

Andover, Oct. 20, 1852

Published in the Independent, October 28, 1852, signed “H. E. B. S.” It was reprinted in The May Flower: and Miscellaneous Writings (1855). It later appears in Religious Poems (1867), with the title changed to “The Inner Voice,”

The Other World

It lies around us like a cloud,
….A world we do not see;
Yet the same closing of an eye
….May bring us there to be.

Its gentle breezes fan our cheek;
….Amid our worldly cares,
Its gentle voices whisper love,
….And mingle with our prayers.

Sweet hearts around us throb and beat,
….Sweet helping hands are stirred,
And palpitates the veil between
….With breathings almost heard.

The silence, awful, sweet, and calm,
….They have no power to break;
For mortal words are not for them
….To utter or partake.

So thin, so soft, so sweet, they glide,
….So near to press they seem—
They seem to lull us to our rest,
….And melt into our dream.

And in the hush of rest they bring
….‘Tis easy now to see,
How lovely and how sweet a pass
….The hour of death may be.

To close the eye, and close the ear,
….Wrapped in a trance of bliss,
And gently drawn in loving arms,
….To swoon to that—from this:

Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep,
….Scarce asking where we are,
To feel all evil sink away,
….All sorrow and all care.

Sweet souls around us! watch us still,
….Press nearer to our side;
Into our thoughts, into our prayers,
….With gentle helpings glide.

Let death between us be as naught,
….A dried and vanished stream;
Your joy be the reality,
….Our suffering life the dream.

Published in the Independent, December 27, 1860. Reprinted in Religious Poems (1867).

“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man; thou shalt keep them secretly as in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.”

When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,
….And billows wild contend with angry roar,
‘Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,
….That peaceful stillness reigneth, evermore.

Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,
….And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce so e’er he flieth,
….Disturbs the sabbath of that deeper sea.

So to the heart that knows thy love, oh Purest!
….There is a temple, sacred evermore,
And all the babble of life’s angry voices
….Die in hushed stillness, at its peaceful door.

Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,
….And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce so e’er he flieth,
….Disturbs the soul that dwells, oh Lord, in thee.

Oh rest of rests! Oh peace, serene, eternal!
….Thou ever livest; and thou changest never;
And in the secret of Thy presence, dwelleth
….Fullness of joy—forever and forever.

Andover, Oct. 12

Published in the Independent, October 21, 1852, and signed with her initials “H. E. B. S.” Originally untitled, it was named “Christ’s Peace” when it was reprinted in The May Flower (1855), and “The Secret” in Religious Poems (1867). This was one of three Stowe poems included in The Plymouth Collection of Hymns (1855).

Abide In Me and I In You

…………The Soul’s Answer

That mystic word of thine, Oh, Sovereign Lord!
….Is all too pure, too high, too deep for me;
Weary of striving, and with longing faint,
….I breathe it back again in prayer to thee.

Abide in me, I pray, and I in Thee;
….From this good hour, O leave me never more;
Then shall the discord cease, the wound be healed,
….The life-long bleeding of the soul be o’er.

Abide in me—o’ershadow by thy love,
….Each half-formed purpose and dark thought of sin;
Quench ere it rise, each selfish low desire,
….And keep my soul as thine, calm and divine.

As some rare perfume in a vase of clay
….Pervades it with a fragrance not its own—
So, when thou dwellest in a mortal soul,
….All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.

The soul alone, like a neglected harp,
….Grows out of tune, and needs that hand divine;
Dwell thou within it, tune and touch the chords,
….Till every note and string shall answer thine.

Abide in me; there have been moments pure
….When I have seen thy face and felt thy power;
Then evil lost its grasp, and passion hushed,
….Owned the divine enchantment of the hour.

These were but seasons beautiful and rare;
….Abide in me—and they shall ever be;
I pray thee now fulfill my earnest prayer,
….Come and abide in me, and I in thee.

Andover, July 20

Published in the Independent, August 12, 1852, and signed “H. E. B. S.” It was reprinted in The May Flower (1855), and Religious Poems (1867). This was one of three Stowe poems included in The Plymouth Collection of Hymns (1855).

Sources:

“Married,” Boston Post, March 15, 1836, 2. [note: the bride is incorrectly named as “Miss Catharine Beecher,” rather than Harriet.]

Marriages,” Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls, Vermont), March 24, 1836, 47.

“The Mayflower,” New York Evening Post, April 12, 1843, [2].

“Literary Notices” Baltimore Sun, April 14, 1843, [2].

“A New Story by Mrs. Stowe,” National Era, May 8, 1851, 74.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” National Era, April 1, 1852, 3.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Religious Poems (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867).

“A Remarkable Family,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 12, 1878, [4].

Rufus Wilmot Grimswold and R. H. Stoddard, The Female Poets of America (New York: James Miller, 1878), 428-431.

“Prof. C. E. Stowe,” Chicago Tribune, August 23, 1886, [1].

“The Beecher Family,” Philadelphia Times, March 9, 1887, [2].

James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appleton’s Cylopaedia of American Biography, Vol.5, Pickering-Sumter (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1888), 713-715.

Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott Company, 1941).

Lee Fairchild (ca. 1860-1910)

Lee Fairchild in New Peterson Magazine, June 1893

The name Lee Fairchild may not be familiar to today’s readers, but during his lifetime he was recognized as a humorist, a newspaper editor, and a political orator. He was perhaps best known for his poems, which were published in newspapers throughout the United States.

Fairchild was born around 1860 in Illinois, but little else is known of his early life. He attended Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois, graduating in 1886. He entered the ministry soon afterward, holding a pastorate at the First Universalist Church in Lewiston, Idaho, from 1886 to 1888, followed by a year-long pastorate at the Universalist Church at Cedar Falls, Iowa. Ill health compelled him to eventually give up the ministry. “There was also some misunderstanding regarding salary,” according to the San Francisco Call, “and he was the originator of the saying that ‘he could get along very well with the sinners, but had trouble with the saints.’” (May 25, 1895)

Fairchild moved to Portland, Oregon, where he wrote a humor column for the West Shore, and was at one time its associate editor. He later owned and edited the Pacific Magazine (formerly the Washington Magazine), published at Seattle, Washington, and for a short time he taught English Literature at the State Agricultural College, at Pullman, Washington.

After a few years he moved to St. Helena, California, and became editor of the local newspaper, the Sentinel. On November 25, 1895, after a brief courtship, he married Anna Ashim, the owner of a candy and variety store in St. Helena, who had been widowed less than a year. They were wed aboard the steamship Walla Walla, while en route from San Francisco to Victoria, Canada. The marriage, however, lasted only three and a half years. On August 1, 1899, his wife filed a petition for divorce, claiming that “without just cause or provocation [Fairchild] deserted and abandoned his wife, and informed her that it was not his intention to live with her any longer or contribute to her support.” (Oregonian, January 5, 1902)

Fairchild soon branched out into politics, and in 1895 was appointed the Assistant Enrolling Clerk in the California Legislature. He enjoyed greater success as a stump speaker, first discoursing on behalf of Republican candidate for governor Morris M. Estee. Soon afterward he was selected by General John M. Clarkson of the Republican National Committee, to be one of the orators for William McKinley’s 1896 presidential campaign, and Fairchild surrendered his editorship of the Sentinel and moved to Washington, D. C.. During this campaign “Fairchild’s ability as a spell-binder brought him into general notice,” and he was hailed as the “Chauncey Depew of the West” and the “Artemus Ward of the Pacific Coast” (Call, March 20, 1910).

“Lee Fairchild was a spellbinder in the true sense of the word,” wrote his friend Edwin Emerson. “He could keep any audience spellbound by the thrill of his oratory alone. According to him no man was worthy to be called an orator, who could not, at will, make his listeners both laugh and weep. Fairchild could certainly do this.” (Mitchell, 468). He later founded a school of spell-binding in New York and taught classes on all types of oratory.

Fairchild was selected as one of the orators during Theodore Roosevelt’s successful run for governor of New York in 1898, and during McKinley’s 1900 presidential campaign Fairchild was being prominently considered for a cabinet position.

He moved to New York City, where he spent the remainder of his life. He edited the Thistle from 1902 to 1903, and for several years served as president of the Pleiades Club of New York. At one time Fairchild was engaged in a literary feud in the press with writer Ambrose Bierce.

Fairchild was a prolific writer, and his poems appeared in the Chicago Journal, Life, the New York Sun, the New York World, the New York Herald, and many other periodicals. Several of his poems were included in the anthology A Collection of Poems by America’s Younger Poets, Volume 1 (1887). Three volumes of his poetry were published during Fairchild’s lifetime: Poems (1887), Poems (1889, an enlarged edition of his earlier collection), and Don Juan’s Bouquet (1903).

Fairchild died of pneumonia on March 19, 1910, at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Penniless at the time of his death, he was buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery in the New York Press Club plot, a section reserved for “friendless journalists” who could not afford the price of their own burial.

Meditation

In the deep solitude of mine own heart
My spirit wanders in the brooding hush
And solemn awe of a strange world unseen.
Here in a valley of despair pale ghosts
Go trooping by,—the memories of hopes
Long perished. There upon the mystic hill
A congregation of white forms appears,
So thinly veiled with the encircling gloom
Methinks I recognized my mother’s smile
Of welcome.
Beyond, a mountain lifts its towers of strength,
Bathed in a light of which the mellow flame
Of evening was but a faint prophecy;
And from its wooded haunts flow forth such streams
As gladden all the planet of the heart,
Which has its continents, its rivers and
Its seas,—a habitation of the gods.
Above it broods a firmament thick-set
With intellectual stars; and in its midst
I see the throne of God, who hung the worlds
Within the universal void, and made
Out of the unsubstantial air, as ‘twere,
The pillars of the universe.

Seattle, Washington,

Published in the Unitarian, May 1891.

Time’s Ocean

Time’s ocean, rolling evermore,
Casts, once a century, ashore
Some shining pearl of truth to glow
In the dull sands of what we know.

Published in the Optimist (Boone, Iowa), September 1900.

A Prudent Coward

I am too frail a ship for such a sea
….As rolls its billows o’er the liquid waste,
….And stormy highway, where the tempests haste,
And drown the thunders in their revelry;
Though round the shore the deep brood tranquilly,
….I will not venture forth where storms have raced,
….And played with ships as if they were but placed
On sea as spoils of its tempestuous glee

I rather linger near this tranquil beach
And have the braggart write upon my breast,
….“A coward never leaves his native strand,”
Than wander forth where I should, sinking, teach
My fathomed fate where hence a wreck should rest,
….Unknown upon the deep’s unsunned land.

Published in the West Shore, June 1887; reprinted in A Collection of Poems by America’s Younger Poets, Volume 1 (1888); and Poems (1889).

The Glad Morn

All night the sea had told her tale of woe—
How like a sobbing woman full of grief
As if in telling it there were relief.
The fickle love-sick moon that wooed her so
Goes down, and frosty morn begins to blow
Out night’s dim-burning lamps; and every leaf
Is trembling where the wind steals like a thief
A-through the startled trees that whisper low.
Now all the land seems weeping with the sea;
The grass is bending ‘neath its weight of tears
And damp and heavy hangs the drooping vine.

The east is kindled with the day to be;
The landscape glittering with gems appears—
And sunrise turns the vast gray sea to wine.

Published in the Optimist, October 1900; reprinted in Don Juan’s Bouquet (1903).

Manufacture of Fame

A slip of paper, any shade,
….A goose-quill and a drop of ink,
And lo! anon my fame is made—
….Provided I can think!

Originally published as “Provided” in Godey’s Magazine, May 1898.

Poetry

True poetry is but the rose
….That’s painted by sweet Fancy’s brush,
As it adorns the branch of prose,
….And beautifies Thought’s thorny bush.

Published in Youth’s Companion, August 9, 1888; reprinted in A Collection of Poems by America’s Younger Poets, Volume 1 (1888).

A Silent Intruder

With weary heart I leave the busy ways
Of men and wander in the leafy wood—
The dusky, timbered fields of solitude—
Whose paths are mantled with the mingled haze
Of sun and shade; where blend and float the lays
Of many birds each singing as it should
Its fragmentary song, half-understood
By him who fain would join their artless praise—
For God loves wordless songs. But I refrain
From mingling with their songs the notes of creeds
(Coinage of brains estranged from heart and love)
Lest Nature, frowning, bid me not again
Intrude upon her fields where Worship pleads
Her cause in call of thrush and coo of dove!

Lewiston, Idaho

Published in Open Court (Chicago), May 12, 1887; reprinted in A Collection of Poems by America’s Younger Poets, Volume 1 (1888); and Poems (1889).

Advice to a Bard

If you would catch, my bard, the public ear
Put thunder in your verse and make her hear.
Catch not upon your harp the rippling song
Of drifting waves and think to charm the throng
With gentler strains; but grasp the ocean-storm,
Hurting her landward, terrible in form,
That on shall rush, in awful revelry,
A rolling, deep, dark, lost, wild, wand’ring sea,
Her bosom changed with hell’s artillery
Whose accents, breaking far o’er hill and lea,
Shall rouse them from their lethargy!
Then, in her wake, on listening calm,
Pour forth again thy wonted psalm,
Whose soothing strains shall float along
Upon the charmed waves of song!

Galesburg, Ill.

Published in the Inter Ocean, January 30, 1888

Memorial Day

……….This red rose’s flame
….Lights up the gloom that broodeth o’er
A stranger’s grave. What was his name?
….I do not know; nor on what shore
His early days of joy were spent,
….With never thought of future strife,
Or frown of smoky battlement,
….Or the mad field where his red life
Poured out like wine! It matters not;
Never a soldier is forgot.

……….My country stands
On memory’s marbled fields to-day,
….And all the flowers in her hands
Seem but forget-me-nots. And May
….Looks through the dead April’s tearful eyes
Upon whose sorrow-blinded gaze
….Dim breaks a forest of the skies,
And through the soft, blue, melting hate
Long lines of soldiers clad in white.

Published in the West Shore, May 31, 1890.

Notes:
According to a couple of Lewiston, Idaho, newspaper articles from the 1880s, Fairchild had a sister named Ora (or Oris) Fairchild, who was a resident of Portland, Oregon.

Biographical Sources:
Ella Higginson, “Some Pacific Coast Writers,” New Peterson Magazine, June 1893, 608-609;
“Around the Corridors,” San Francisco Call, April 9, 1895, 6;
“Mr. Fairchild and Portia,” San Francisco Call, May 25, 1895, 6;
“His Cheap Romance,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1895, 3;
“Coast Exchanges,” San Francisco Call, May 4, 1896, 6;
“Time to Stop Tinkering,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 8, 1898, 9;
“Lee Fairchild’s Romance,” Oregonian, January 5, 1902, 3;
“Lee Fairchild Dead,” New York Times, March 20, 1910, 11;
“Lee Fairchild is victim of pneumonia,” San Francisco Call, March 20, 1910, 23;
“Lee Fairchild died after sudden illness,” San Francisco Examiner, March 20, 1910, 70;
“Funeral of Lee Fairchild,” Plainfield (New Jersey) Courier-News, March 22, 1910, 9;
Francis Joseph Ross Mitchell, ed., The Scroll of Phi Delta Theta, Vol. 34 (Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company, 1910), 468-471;
David W. Dunlap, “In Cypress Hills, a Little-Known Monument to Journalism’s Short Memory,” New York Times, November 27, 2011, https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/in-cypress-hills-a-little-known-monument-to-journalisms-short-memory/, accessed March 31, 2019.

Luella Clark (1832-1915)

Luella Clark was a prolific nineteenth-century poet whose effusions graced the pages of the leading literary journals in the United States, but today her contributions to literature have been largely forgotten. Clark’s importance to history lies in her association with social reformer Frances Elizabeth Willard; as a college professor at the Northwestern Female College (now Northwestern University), Clark was an instructor, adviser, mentor, and beloved friend of Willard.

Luella Clark, courtesy of Northwestern University Archives

Biographical information concerning Clark is scarce. The daughter of James and Lucinda (Eastman) Clark, she was born March 10, 1832 in Lisbon, New Hampshire and was educated at Newbury Seminary in Vermont. She afterward became a school teacher and taught for several years in New York and Wisconsin.

In 1858 Clark came to Evanston, Illinois, where she was preceptress of mental science and belles lettres at the Northwestern Female College. She later taught German, and for two years served as the school’s lady principal. After ten years at Northwestern, Clark left Evanston to teach at the Wesleyan Woman’s College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Clark retired from teaching in 1878, and returned to New Hampshire to care for her ailing mother. Although her mother died in 1889, Clark stayed at the family farm in Landaff until 1905. She then moved to Newport, Rhode Island to live with her nieces Mary, Blanche, and Luella Leavitt. Clark never married. She died in Newport, Rhode Island on October 19, 1915, and was interred at the Landaff Center Cemetery in Landaff, New Hampshire. In 1947, after the death of her niece, Luella Katherine Leavitt, $15,000 was bequeathed to Northwestern University to establish the Luella Clark scholarship fund.

Luella Clark (younger), courtesy of Northwestern University Archives

Clark’s former pupil, future WCTU president Frances Willard, later wrote of her beloved teacher:

Miss Luella Clark, of the Northwestern Female College, was a genius, and the world would have known it had the motor matched the intellectual forces of her being. She was a poet born, but poets must be made as well as born. If ever anybody loved Evanston with something akin to worship, that woman did…She was “composition teacher,” and gave strong and noble impulse to our proclivities for writing; she taught us mental philosophy and was a spiritual uplift not less than a mental stimulus to her pupils. She was a most sensitive and refined nature, upon whom the world’s rough winds might not play without imparting pain. In our sorrows she was at one with us, but the bright smile and telling repartee ofttimes added flavor to our joy. (A Classic Town, 227-228)

Clark was a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, the National Era, and the Independent. A staunch Methodist, Clark’s works also appeared frequently in publications of that denomination, including the Ladies’ Repository, Zion’s Herald, and the Christian Advocate. A collection of her poems, April Days, was published in 1904.

A Dead Rose

Here is a withered rose, pressed close between
The leaves of Browning’s lyrics; crimson stain—
The blood of rose or lyric? on the page—
One brittle, faded leaf upon the stem.
Dead, buried here; O long-forgotten flower,
Why shouldst thou on this sullen winter day
Come to thy resurrection? O pale leaves,
How red you grow, how sweet: how sing the birds.
How all the splendid passion of that June
When first you bloomed comes surging back, the while
The wind and snow beat on the frozen pane—
Warmth, wealth of blossoms, faces, hearts beloved!
Back to thy death, dear rose! Why shouldst thou live,
Since cold the hand that plucked thee, long ago?

Published in April Days (1904)

Resurrection

The April days are here; the winter’s cold
Gives place to genial warmth; the willows bold
Put on their gala dress to greet the day,
The bluebird sings in just the old, sweet way.

Each restless rootlet, freed from frosty night,
Builds quick a blade of green to greet the light,
And every footfall feels the busy strife
Of germs unnumbered struggling into life.

The robin, lover of the twilight long,
Blesses the budding orchard boughs with song.
A trembling gauze of green the woodland holds
Wrapped in the mystery of its fragrant folds.

The violets, up and down each wayward lane,
Answer the summons of the clear-voiced rain—
Waking serene from sleep, as children do—
The love-light in their eyes tender and true.

Learn, O my soul, the lesson o’er and o’er—
Life conquers death, now and forevermore;
Nay, rather death is not. Whate’er befall,
‘Tis life alone, triumphant over all.

Published in April Days (1904)

Up the Hill A-Berrying

On a sunny summer morning,
….Early as the dew was dry,
Up the hill I went a-berrying;
….Need I tell you—tell you why?
Farmer Davis had a daughter;
….And it happened that I knew,
On such sunny mornings, Jenny
….Up the hill went berrying too.

Lonely work is picking berries;
….So I joined her on the hill:
“Jenny, dear,” said I, “your basket’s
….Quite too large for one to fill.”
So we staid—we two—to fill it,
….Jenny talking—I was still—
Leading where the way was steepest;
….Picking berries up the hill.

“This is up-hill work,” said Jenny:
….“So is life,” said I; “shall we
Climb it each alone, or, Jenny,
….Will you come and climb with me?”
Redder than the blushing berries
….Jenny’s cheek a moment grew;
While, without delay, she answered,
….“I will come and climb with you.”

Published in the Ladies’ Repository, March 1859; April Days (1904). “Up the Hill A-Berrying” is probably Luella Clark’s best-known poem, and was published widely in newspapers across the country. In the September 1860 edition of the Ladies’ Repository, the editor noted: “Up the Hill A-Berrying—A neat little poem, by Luella Clark, was published under this title in the March number, 1859, of the Repository—since then it has been copied into many of our exchanges with a variety of headings, such as “Jenny,” “I and Jenny Davis,” but, we believe, never once with the proper credit either to the author or the magazine.”

An April Day

Sometime I sit in the quiet gray
Of the slow-departing April day,
And think what record it bears away,
Away beyond the sunset bars,
Beyond the silent, steadfast stars—
What record of my growth, or lack
To seize the hours that come not back—
What gain from this day’s beauty gone;
What from its purple hour of dawn;
What from its sunshine, soft and still,
Sleeping on valley, lake, and hill.
Do I know better what can mean
These countless brave buds bursting green?
Mean for my soul that daily sees
Repeated miracles like these?
My soul that wakes each morn from sleep
To find how constant all things keep
Their settled round—how morn and night
Repeat their charms of sound and sight;
To see how some unhindered Will
Commands each power of nature still,
Subjects all to some subtile law,
So disconnecting force from flaw,
That, ever in a fair design,
Daily unfolds the plan divine—
So that the sunshine never fails
To brighten all earth’s lowliest vales,
So that no blot the morning mars,
No night comes on without its stars;
No ocean tides forget to flow,
No stormy clouds to strew their snow.

Has this day brought me nothing whence
My soul has gained a subtler sense
To pierce the veil that falls between
The earthly and the great unseen?
Have not these bird-songs clear and low,
The sunset’s gold, the mellow glow
Of cheerful noontide on the hill,
Suggested something fairer still?
Has not the violet, blooming sweet
Beneath the tread of careless feet,
Said something plain as any word
That age or prophet ever heard?
Has not the frail and fading flower,
That bloomed and withered in an hour,
No date beyond its passing breath,
No lesson but its painless death?
Ah, yes, if this, if this were all,
If bird-songs perish where they fall,
If sunsets fade and, fading, die,
‘T were vain to ask or wonder why,
Of all our lives each fleeting day
Hath such a changeful, fair array.
But if each symbol hath some germ—
Each glowing star, each creeping worm—
Some germ of what, beyond our ken,
Hath meaning and delight for men,
Then well may all days teach us this,
That God’s good gifts we often miss
By disregard of humble things—
Since every bird that, soaring, sings,
Each weed beside the wayside path,
Some hidden, heavenly meaning hath.
Some message every stone and fern,
If reverently we stoop to learn—
Message which we shall better know
When, at the summons sweet, we go
Beyond the earthly gloom and glow,
And see our life outside its pain,
Beyond its losses and its gain,
And read its puzzling problems plain.

Published in the Ladies’ Repository, April 1870; reprinted in April Days (1904), with the new title “Questionings.”

Getting Caught

Just down on the rim of the meadow green,
….In a cot ‘neath the elm-trees tall,
Lives the prettiest maiden the country round—
….Her name is Leonora Hall.

I met her one day on the river’s bank,
….Leaning over her fishing line,
And the sunshine seemed dim in the light of her eyes,
….And her lips were redder than wine.

How the little fish crowded to nibble her bait!
….“And no wonder,” I foolishly thought;
“Indeed, how could it but be a delight
….By an angler so fair to be caught!”

I helped her to carry the fish she caught,
….And, for all the pains that I took,
I found, when I left her, the treacherous maid
….Had fastened my heart on her hook.

Ah! then I repented my folly and strove—
….But too late—my lost heart to regain;
For, alas! it was fastened so fast that the more
….I struggled the greater the pain.

Then I wisely concluded it couldn’t be helped,
….So I ceased from my vain endeavor,
And went straight to the cruel Leonora and begged
….She’d keep what she’d caught forever.

Ah! was ever a maiden so wicked before?
….For ‘twas “only for sport she fished it,”
And she quickly released my heart; “for,” said she,
….“I have kept it as long as I wished it.”

Published in the Ladies’ Repository, May 1859.

December Rain

The day is dark: the half-forsaken street,
….Through dreary hours,
Gives scarce a sound save the continued beat
….Of ceaseless showers.
And silent here I sit alone and listen
….To the rain,
While countless drizzly drops glide down and glisten
….In chill disdain;
And in their waves of crystal coldness christen
My every thought, while here I sit and listen
….To the drear December rain.

I miss the ‘customed stir along the street,
….The happy hum
Of labor’s many voices, cheerful, sweet,
….That now are dumb;
I miss the well-known tread of eager feet,
….That only come
When days are soft and sunny, lightly tripping
….Up the hall;
I miss the waves of golden sunshine dripping
….Down the wall,
And creeping to my feet with welcome weird
….I miss, I miss a voice—
A voice that checked my grief, that kindly cheered
….Each day’s endeavor;
A voice—ah, pitying Heaven! that I shall hear
….No more forever.
So here I sit and listen, sorely weeping,
….Yet all in vain,
That one who should be here is sleeping—sleeping
….Where now the rain
Falls all unhindered, and the wind is sweeping
….With sad complain;
Where frigid-fingered frosts are slowly creeping
….Down in his grave.
O, Thou, who hast us all in thy kind keeping,
….Sweep from my brain
This swelling water-flood of ceaseless sorrow!
….Let some glad wave,
White-capped with light, steal through the rimy gloom,
….Prophetic of a morrow
….Void of pain,
And blest with springing bloom.

Through mist and falling rain, from far, I hear
….A note of song,
A joyful note, soft-keyed, distinct and clear,
….Such as belong
To bowers of brightness and the bloomy hours
….Of summer morn,
Yet sounding loud above the blasting showers
….December-born.
O! never June, in all her reign of balm,
….With kisses warm,
Won sweeter note than this, now rising calm,
….Triumphant o’er the storm.

Listen and learn a lesson, O, my soul!
….Thy grief give o’er;
And, with believing, quaff Hope’s brimming bowl,
….And faint no more.
Beyond these stormy skies lie realms of calm;
….Then, singing, soar,
Larklike, above thy pain; pluck leaves of palm
….On some still shore
Far toward the limit of thy highest hope;
….Lo! light will pour
Along thine upward flight until it ope
….To paths untried before.

Published in the Ladies’ Repository, February 1857.

Fate

Sorrow knocked; I barred my door.
“Go,” I cried, “and come no more;
I have guests who, gay and sweet,
Cannot bear thy face to meet.”

But erelong from every room
Vanished light and warmth and bloom;
Hope and joy and young love went,
And, late lingering, sweet content.

Then my door I opened wide:
“Sorrow, haste to come,” I cried;
“Welcome now, no more to roam:
Make henceforth my heart thy home.”

Published in the Atlantic Monthly, April 1878

Biographical Sources:
William Turner Coggeshall, The Poets and Poetry of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices (Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster and Company, 1860), 676; Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Boston: Geo. M. Smith & Co., 1889), 101, 170-173; Frances E. Willard, A Classic Town: the Story of Evanston by an “Old Timer” (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, 1891), 227-28; Guy S. Rix, History and Genealogy of the Eastman Family of America: Containing Biographical Sketches and Genealogies of Both Males and Females (Concord, N. H: n. p., 1901), 330-331; Rev. William I. Ward, “A Rare Spirit Hears the Master’s ‘Well Done!’” Zion’s Herald, December 1, 1915; “$15,000 Scholarship Established at N.U. in Honor of Teacher,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 1947, 28; Lydia Jones Trowbridge, Frances Willard of Evanston (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1938), 30; Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford, Writing Out My Heart: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard 1855-96 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 80-81.

Samuel L. Simpson (1845-1899)

Samuel Leonidas Simpson, the “Burns of Oregon,” is widely regarded as nineteenth century Oregon’s most beloved poet. A prolific writer whose poems and stories were published throughout the Pacific Northwest, Simpson is remembered today for only one poem, “Beautiful Willamette,” written when he was twenty-two years old. At the height of his fame, however, Simpson’s various talents were praised extensively by an adulating press. The following editorial from the Oregon State Journal, Eugene, is but one example: “Some of our contemporaries express the opinion, in which we freely concur, that Sam L. Simpson is the most brilliant literary genius in Oregon.” (November 7, 1874) Even after Simpson’s death, the adulation continued. One month after his passing, the editor of the Salem Daily Journal remarked: “[Simpson] will stand in literature as the greatest writer our state has produced.” (July 11, 1899) The editor of the Oregonian was even more blunt: “The death of Sam L. Simpson leaves an absolute blank in respect of the fact that we have among us no poet of merit or reputation.” (July 18, 1899) This pronouncement was made in spite of the fact that at the time, several prominent Oregon poets were still living, including Joaquin Miller, Belle W. Cooke, Frances Fuller Victor, and Ella Higginson.

Since his death, several writers, including literary historians John Horner and Alfred Powers, have numbered Simpson among the major literary figures of nineteenth century Oregon, and it is therefore surprising to discover very little has actually been written about his life. “It has been singularly difficult to find exact information about him,” bemoaned Powers in History of Oregon Literature. “The few brief biographical accounts of him are vague and conflicting in their facts, being unfortunately consistent only in giving the year of his death as 1900 instead of correctly as 1899.” (Powers, 295-96)

Powers’s book, published in 1935, and the chapter on Simpson included therein, did little to revive interest in the dead poet. Over the past century this brief biographical sketch has been one of the few readily available sources of information concerning Simpson’s life. I have very little new information to add. The basic facts are as follows:

Simpson was born on November 10, 1845 in Platte County, Missouri and came to Oregon at six months of age with his parents Benjamin and Nancy (Cooper) Simpson. After residing several years in Oregon City the family moved to Polk County near the Grand Ronde Indian reservation.

At age sixteen Simpson enrolled at Willamette University, and after his 1865 graduation he began the study of law. He passed the law exam the following year, and was admitted to the bar in 1867. He afterward formed a partnership in Salem with fellow attorney J. Quinn Thornton, which lasted for only a few months. After two years of practicing law full time, Simpson decided to pursue a career as a newspaper editor, and in 1870 took charge of the Corvallis Gazette. One year later he moved to Salem and became editor of the Oregon Statesman, a newspaper for which he had served as editor four years earlier.

In June 1873, Simpson moved to San Francisco, after having secured an engagement to write the fourth and fifth books in Bancroft’s Pacific Coast series of readers. During this time he also contributed to the Overland Monthly.

After more than a year in San Francisco, Simpson returned to Oregon and for the next year assumed editorial duties on the Oregon State Journal at Eugene City, while editor Henry Kincaid was away in Washington, D. C.. Kincaid later wrote: “Sam was engaged, during the absence of the editor in Washington, to write editorials for the Journal. His writings were brilliant but irregular and could not be depended upon, as some weeks little or nothing was furnished.” (Powers, 291) The reason for this unreliability was simple: Simpson was an alcoholic. “The weeks without editorials were probably the weeks when he was not sober enough to write them,” speculated Powers, “for he takes front rank, with Burns and Poe, among the drinking poets.” (Powers, 292). As a result of his alcoholism, Simpson found it difficult to gain steady employment. Throughout his later years he drifted from one place to another, working on various newspapers at Astoria, Portland, and Ilwaco, Washington.

Simpson’s alcoholism also affected his personal life. He married a Willamette University classmate, Julia Humphrey, on July 30, 1868, and together they had two sons. After several years of marriage, however, the two were separated.

On June 12, 1899, an inebriated Simpson was walking outside the St. Charles Hotel in Portland when he slipped on the sidewalk and fell. The blow to his head caused irreparable damage, and he died two days later. He was interred at Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland. In 1927 a memorial to Simpson was erected at Lone Fir Cemetery by the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers.

Eleven years after Simpson’s death a collection of his poems, The Golden-Gated West, was published by his sister, Elanora “Nora” Simpson Burney, and his sons, Eugene and Claude.

“More than three-quarters of a century after his death, what is the measure of Simpson’s poetry?” asked Oregon author Ralph Friedman in 1978. “Certainly, he was not of major rank; what might have been is beside the point. Frances Fuller Victor, that perceptive student of literature, was quite correct when she observed, before the birth of the twentieth century, that Simpson ‘had written some of the finest lyrics contributed to local literature, though his style is uneven.’ To her he was no more than a regional poet—and time did not prove her wrong.”(Friedman, 67)

The poems that follow were written at various times in Simpson’s career. The original date and publication source, where known, are given. Several have been taken from The Golden-Gated West, but it is presumed that most of the poems in this collection were previously published elsewhere.

The First Fall of the Snow

In misty silence, dim and gray,
The haggard world last evening lay.

There were no birds at vesper call,
No garlands on the western wall;

No crimson kisses of the light
To warm the falling fringe of night,

As lowering his shield, the sun
Withdrew at once, and day was done.

The pines in plumy phalanx stood,
Embattled monarchs of the wood;

The oak, with stript and knotted arm
Invoked the challenge of the storm;

And asps and alders, by the streams,
Were lost in lonesome summer dreams.

A moment thus, in dark tableau,
You read the spectral sign of woe,

And then beside the roseate hearth
Forgot it all in ease and mirth.

You saw the ruby sparkles bloom,
And fade again in ashen gloom,

As memories, within your heart,
Like flowers flashed and fell apart,—

And all the while, with muffled tread,
The winds foretold the change that sped.

Perhaps in wakeful mood, last night,
You heard a whisper, low and light —

The sound of wings that touched and passed
The vibrant panes of window glass —

The rustle of a robe that kissed
The roof as soft as trailing mist.

‘Twas then a flaky lustre fell
In starry woof of asphodel,

And gloss of diamond, foam of pearl,
Inwrought in many an airy whirl,—

As if, in hyacinthine bowers,
Some sweeter anthem shook the flowers,

Like petaled moonlight o’er the globe—
A gleaming, soft, and magic robe.

And so, at morn, you wake to see
Our earth a lovely mystery—

A bridal orb, a blossomed star,
Redeemed of every woe and scar;

And yet this saintly crown shall pass
In golden bloom and tasselled grass,

When all the rippled streams shall sing
The coronation of the Spring.

The Golden-Gated West (1910). The second half of this poem has been omitted here. This poem was written circa 1879 according to William W. Fidler.

Hood

White despot of the wild Cascades!
I greet thee as the twilight shades
Haunt the disheveled, broken wall
Where sheaves of sunlight burning yet
On frosty tower and minaret
Portray thee, reigning over all!

And gleaming like a silver tent
Above the fir-fringed battlement
Cold Jefferson is crowned with flame;
Fair as a group of fallen stars,
The Sisters, linked with sunset bars,
Pledge thee as Monarch yet again.

The blazing quiver of the storm
Has hung upon thy lonely form,—
Sheathing its ragged barbs of fire,
When night has crushed its tempest wings
Against thy granite anchorings:
I read no record of their ire.

The centuries which o’er thee tramp,
Like spectres to their shadow-camp,
Beneath thee neither scar nor stain;
The gliding dimples of the sea,
The stars’ sweet-eyed eternity,
Do not a lovelier youth maintain!

And misty flashes of the morn
Are first upon thy shoulders born
When all the world is dark below;
And sunset’s last and lovely ray—
Dropped by the weary hand of Day—
Wreathes thy pale brow with ling’ring glow.

Thus Memory and Hope are wrought
Triumphant as the sculptor’s thought
When syllabled in marble speech;
And God-ward like a prophet’s prayer
Thou scalest the heaven’s windy stair
The quiet of the spheres to teach.

And what an empire! rough and shorn,
By old disorders ploughed and torn,
Sun-ward the mighty realms are spread;
In broidery of wood and mead,
Willamette’s green mosaics lead
Down where the rushing breakers tread.

Lodged in thy helmet’s icy clasp
The star of conquest rests at last,—
Never to lead the bold again;
Its rays like spears of silver laid
Across the grave, but newly made—
The Pioneer’s, in sea-side glen.

An iron arm with gleaming coil
Has won a wilderness for Toil!
The traffic of the seas are wed;
The morning of a brighter age
Than ever lit historic page
Lifts in the west its golden head!

With mutterings of doubt and fear,
And dark with battle long and drear,
The Pagan spirit of the past
Stalks through the silence and the night
That deepen with the ages’ flight—
Conscious of God and Truth at last!

The Desert hungers for the Sphinx,
Its tawny ocean swells and sinks
About her and the Pyramids;
The Simoom’s ghostly wings of sand
Will surely shroud them as they stand,
And seal those sad and weary lids;

And still a hand in chrystal mail
Here, flashing to the clouds, will hail
The tomb of Egypt’s cruel jest;
And where the sea-tides leap and shine
Along the New World’s border line,
Proclaim the Empire of the West!

Published in the State Rights Democrat (Albany, Ore.), January 14, 1870. This poem was significantly altered before it was published in The Golden-Gated West (1910). It is not known if these alterations were done by Simpson himself for a later publication of this poem, or if was altered by W. T. Burney, who edited the posthumous collection of Simpson’s poems, The Golden-Gated West. If Simpson’s other poems were altered in this fashion, it is no wonder Colonel R. A. Miller complained that “the over-editing of this book, by an ‘alleged literary expert’ of the East, had ‘ruined much of Sam Simpson’s work’ by presenting is in ‘this distorted form.’” (Powers, 300)

The Genii of the Flask

One dark and dreary winter’s day,
In times that long have passed away,
Portland, a scrawny village, stood
Knee-deep in pristine seas of mud,
With blackened stumps along the street
The frightened traveler to greet,
And, back of all, the firs, deep-massed
That moaned and whispered as he passed.

….The pale, low-wheeling, spectral sun
Its weary course had almost run,
But not a tint of sunset light
Signaled the town a fair “good-night.”
A heavy mist of mournful gray
Upon Willamette’s bosom lay,
And all was silence and despair
Save on the single thoroughfare
Where at some Bacchanalian fane
The glasses clinked a merry strain;
For it was New Year’s eve and all
The world was holding carnival.

Then up from that one gleam of life
Where men, inured to toil and strife,
Made merry on the gracious eve,
When all of cark and care take leave,
A pale and silent man was seen.

“I, too,” he said, “must e’en ask leave
To have one more my New Year’s eve,
And ‘Death’ shall be the toast I’ll drink
While hovering on the wild gulf’s brink.”
His eyes began to gleam and gloat,
And from his threadbare overcoat
He drew a heavy flask of liquor,
Which in the firelight seemed to flicker
With myriad strange and joyous lights,
The promise of untold delights,
Delights that fill the souls that come
Into the blessed Elysium.

He drank, drank deep, and sat him down
His solitary hearth beside,
And then upon his pallid face
You could with slight discernment trace
The purpose of the suicide
Who drank his lingering fears to drown.

Ah, well, sometimes we hardly blame
The actors in the deed of shame,
And thus his story soon is told;
He loved, as only such men love,
One whom he prized his soul above;
But poverty, with iron arm,
Thrust back affection overwarm,
And so at last, a hero bold,
He sought the West for needed gold.
‘Twas after wand’ring wild and drear
One smiling summer found him here;
And land be bought and settled down
To be the monarch of the town,
Which hardly was in embryo then,
The rugged camp of fearless men.
All was invested, but in vain
He watched for fortune’s shining wain
Through weary years, until the light
Of hope went out and all was night.
*……….*………. *………. *………. *……….*
He drank until he slept at last,
To make his own election sure.
*………. *………. *……… *………. *………. *
The years rolled on, the city grew,
Slowly but on foundation true,
and to our hero it is strange
Also should come with years a change?
Alack, it was all for the worse—
That magic flask became his curse.
It was his savior, so he thought,
And unto him the angel brought,
And so he worshipped it too well
And into hopeless ruin fell.

Again ‘tis happy New Year’s Eve
When men of cark and care take leave,
And one whom we have cause to know
Sits in the firelight’s fitful glow,
The very presence of despair,
From broken boots to tangled hair.
Hard drink has done it and his lands
Long since have gone to other hands;
But he has filled the flask once more
And has a dreary hope somehow
The angel of the shining brow
Will come as on the time before.
He sleeps at last, and wakes to see
A horror and a mystery;
‘Tis Orcus, now without a mask,
Arising from that fateful flask,
An awful shape—no words can paint
The terror of the fallen saint.
“I am your angel now,” he cries
“Your other friend is in the skies.”
Then with a mocking laugh and low
And in a swirl of azure flame
He sought the awful realms below
For which we have no fitting name.

The doomed one sleeps again, the day
Loos in upon him, cold and gray,
And yet he wakes not, all is o’er—
A prophet’s tongue could say no more.

Published in the Daily Journal (Salem, Ore.), July 11, 1899. This poem was evidently published several years earlier, but the original source is unknown. In reprinting this poem after Simpson’s death, the editor of the Daily Journal noted that this poem would be “familiar to old residents of Oregon but will be new to our visitors and many of the present day and generation.”

Falls of the Willamette

Here wheels the thunder-breathing steed,
As if in dread to stay and heed
….A grander pageant than his own,
Wild waters whirl in cresting spray,
Fair as the fragrant wreaths of May,
….And loud with laughter, song and moan.

Yonder embattled firs around,
Chant high above, in martial sound,
….The paeans of the marching years;
And here a dark, historic cliff,
Writ o’er with many a hieroglyph,
….Echoes and answers, leans and hears.

And lo! Within the surge and roar,
Scarfed with a rainbow evermore,
….The pallid priestess of the flood,
Swinging her censer to and fro,
As swift suns wheel and soft moons glow
….Aloof, through lapsing time has stood.

The tented and the tawny bands
Whose camp-smoke curled along these sands,
….And climbed and crowned the rocky shore,
To murmurless deep seas and pale
Have passed, with gray and slanting sail,
….Forgetful of the spear and oar.

So now beside this stormy gate,
Pilgrims of brighter visage wait,
….To rest in turn beneath the sod:—
Yet shall this melody be rolled
For aye, these voices manifold
….The echo of a changeless God!

The Golden-Gated West (1910)

At Linnton’s Shambles

[At Linnton, a village on the Willamette, is located an abattoir, where herds of Oregon cayuses are introduced through the canning route to the quartermasters of the armies of the world.]

With its blue seas afoam and its islands aglow
….And the continents loud with the clamor of life,
O, whither, O, whither, as dim cycles flow,
….Careereth the earth with its passion and strife?
As if lost in the night, to each other we call,
With lips moist with kisses or pallid with fear;
But out of the dark comes no answer at all,
….No solace from oracle, prophet or seer.

We are far from the highway; our landmarks are lost,
….And the stars reel above us in glimmering dance,
While our bacchanal torches, in high revel tossed,
….Portray that in darkness and doubt we advance;
Half God and half beast, we achieve what we dare,
….Defy every law in a rapture of sin—
Then away to our fanes with our hot bosoms bare,
….As if scourging and shrieking nepenthe might win!

Alas, it was yesterday only I saw
….How surely that people are drifting astray,
From dreams that were cherished, from loves that were law,
….And out o’er the battlements swarming away;
For at Linnton, down there where the shimmering tide

….Of the great river sweeps to the hoarse-calling sea,
Low singing, its murmur of anguish to hide,
….Are the red, reeking shambles the strange times decree.

A herd of wild horses, with streaming, tossed manes,
….In a grass field anear were disporting at will,
For the blood of Arabia throbbed in their veins,
….As they swept like a storm round the slope of the hill.
They were exiles from uplands beyond the Cascades,
….The pampas of sagebrush and bunchgrass their home,
Where only the stealthy coyote invades
….And the juniper scents the wild pastures they roam.
How glad were their gambols along the rich fields
….In the glory of sunlight that thrilled the grass seas,
For the beauty and ardor that sweet freedom yields
….Were theirs, as they raced with the sun and the breeze;
For the strain of the racers had moulded their limbs
….And arched their proud necks with a thunderous might
Which flamed in their nostrils, whose tremulous rims
….Expanded and quivered with royal delight.

O, that life of the plains! the jubilant rush
….Of the unbitted steeds on the deep-rooted turf,
Like the mad waves careering when storms wake the hush
….Of the slumbering ocean in billow and surf;
How they leaped in their pride, how their black banners streamed;
….For the world was still young in the original waste—
The dim mountain vistas with glamour bedreamed,
….And the wind and the waters exultant and chaste.

In time the young rev’lers must yield to the rein
….And their beauty and vigor inure to men’s needs,
For the splendor and dash of the life of the plain
….Is the glowing romance that preludes after-deeds.
But hark! from the tumult of cities is borne
….On the bland morning breezes, the rumble and roar
Of the steam-car and trolley—ah! let us mourn,
….For the dutiful day of the courser is o’er.

And hearken! With ominous “whisper and hum,”
….The gleaming road-eagles, the motor-cars, pass,
And the horse bows his head with disaster o’ercome,
….For his destiny’s over, alas and alas!
And now in this pasture at Linnton behold
….The herd that is doomed for the shambles hard by,
With October’s clear sunlight of mellowest gold
….On their handsome coats playing and kindling each eye.

They dreamed not of fate, how the cannibal man
….Would requite the devotion of glorious years—
Put sentiment, honor and worth in a “can,”
….With hardly the grace of reptilian tears.
O! shades of Bucephalus, splendid in war,
….Of the steeds that bore Sheridan into the fight,
And to love’s consummation the young Lochinvar,
….Are we smitten with madness, incurable blight?

Arise, Rozinante, bring Quixote again,
….Bold champion of maidens and scourger of wrong,
Let him ride down the crazy delusions of men
….And deliver the weak from the tyrannous strong.
O valor and beauty, and battle and love,
….Shall the ghouls have the horse and no hades have them,
Whom the stars, as they clash their gold lances above,
….And the winds and the waves in their anger condemn?

May Pegasus fiery, from Castaly’s stream,
….Drive hideous nightmares to rend their repose
Till their very hair stiffens in, struggles to scream,
….As the pale horse shall bear them to Stygian woes.

The Golden-Gated West (1910)

from Camp-Fires of the Pioneers

And now the last good-bye is said—
Good-bye! the living and the dead
In those sad words together speak,
And all your chosen ways are bleak!

And now the cracking lashes send
A thrill of action down the train,
Their brawny necks the oxen bend
And slowly move each covered wain;
And horsemen gallop down the line,
And wheel around the loosened kine
That straggle, lowing, on the plain,
And lift glad hands to babes that laugh,
And dash the buttercups like chaff.
Hurrah! the skies are jewel blue.
In plumes of green and braid of gold;
The Earth is wondrous to behold.
And hopes are light and hearts are true!
Hurrah! hurrah! the fair, the free,
The sudden sweep of ecstasy
That lifts the soul on wings of fire
When fears consume and doubts expire—
When the unfettered human thought
The oriflamme of hope has caught
And over sunset shore and seas,
Is trailing robes of mysteries.
*………. *………. *………. *……….*
A hundred nights, a hundred days!
Nor folded cloud, nor silken haze
Mellow the sun’s midsummer blaze.
Along the scorched and scorching plain,
All slowly drags the wasted train.
The dust starts up where e’re you tread,
Like angry ashes of the dead,
And veils you in its choking cloud
And wraps you in its awful shroud.

There is no longer any care.
To round the speech and speak men fair,
Or any staying sense of shame.
The hearts of all are sifted through,
The chaff is windowed from the grain,
And every where the false and true
Are stamped with signets deep and plain.
For some are silent, some are loud,
And urge like traits among the crowd.
And some are mild, and some are sharp
In word and deed, and snarl and carp,
And fret the camp with family broils.
And some with tempers sweet and bland.

Do seem to bear a magic wand,
That lightens all the daily toils,
As sandal wood in burning breaths,
Sweet odor in its curling wreathes.
And some go howling to their God,
And feign to kiss the heavy rod;
And some, maybe, with silent prayers,
Bend not in any griefs or cares,
But clench their teeth to do or die,
Without a whine, or curse, or cry.

And so the dust and grit and stain
Of travel wears into the grain;
And so the hearts and souls of men
Were darkly tried and tested then;
And so in happy after years,
When smiles have long outlived the tears,
If any friend should ask of you,
If such or such an one you knew?
I hear you answer, terse and grim,
“Ah, yes—I crossed the plains with him!”

And lo, a lurid phantom stands
To greet you in the lonely lands,
Among all lesser phantoms dight.
With spoils of death his meagre hands
Salute you as you pass and claim
The sacred fee that feeds his flame.
The march is now become a blight,
And wreck and ruin strew the path
As if you fled Jehovah’s wrath.
There are no birds to sing you joy;
You have no joy for birds to sing;
A hundred pangs of care annoy—
A thousand troubles fret and sting.

The desert mocks you all the while
With that dry shimmer of a smile.
That dazzles on a bleeding skull.
The bloom is withered on your cheek.
You slowly move and slowly speak,
And every eye is dim and dull.
Alas, it is a lonesome land
Of bitter sage and barren sand.
Under a bleak and friendless sky,
That never heard the robing sing,
Or kissed the lark’s exultant wing,
Nor breathed a rose’s fragrant sigh.
A weary land, alas! alas!
The shadows of the vultures pass
A spectral sign along your path;
The hungry wolf, with head askance,
Throws back at you a scowling glance
Of malice, hate and coward wrath;
A desert stretch, a reach of sand,
That crumbles at your lifted hand;
A dead, drear land, accursed, unknown,
In withered shroud asleep—alone—
Only the glimmering ghosts of seas
In broidery of flowers and trees
And rivers blue and cool, that seem
To ripple as in fevered dream.
Only to taunt your thirst and fly
The plains that glisten bleak and dry.
A hundred days, a hundred nights—
The goal is further than before,
And all the changing shades and light
Enwreath your souls with dreams no more.

A weary sun is overhead.
And fadded pampas round you spread,
A sere and sad eternity.
And if some grisly mountains rise
Like riven temples in the skies,
You turn in fear and pass them by.

And all are overworn and all
Unmask their hidden frailties then;
And some upon their Maker call
In fear that they have missed His ken.
And all are overworn; the flesh
Becomes a frail translucent mesh,
That will not mask the spirit now.
*………. *……… *………. *………. *
The ox lies gasping in the yoke
Beside the wagon that he drew,
Where the forsaken campfires smoke
To hopeless skies of tawny blue;
And while you’re straught you still must mark
The flight of life’s delusive spark—
The sombre pranks of grief that lie
So thick in human history.
And oh, so dark on this bleak page
Of drifting sand and dreary sage!
The sulky levels of the day;
The night with weird enchantment fills,
And mythic forests stretch away
Along the slopes of shadow hills,
And in the solemn stillness breaks
The wild wolf’s music of the plains,
As if a guardian spirit wakes
The dreary dead in that refrain
That swells and gathers like a wail,
Of woe from Plutus’ ebon pale,
Then sinks in pulseless calm again.

Published in the Pacific Monthly, July 1900; reprinted, with significant alterations, in The Golden-Gated West. “Camp-Fires of the Pioneers” is Simpson’s longest poem, and was written circa 1879. It was first published a year after Simpson’s death by William W. Fidler, from a first draft manuscript left by Simpson. Fidler explains: “The poem, as now presented to the public, lacks the final polish and finish of the author, as it was from the first rough draft that these fragments, after considerable pains and difficulty, were transcribed. The poet’s habit usually was to block out a poem in the rough, and then immediately prepare a perfected copy for publication. The improved version of this poem went with the volume he had hoped to have published. But that volume, in keeping with the run of bad luck that seemed to keep the author in continuous companionship, failed to get into print…As has already been intimated, the copy from which these fragments are taken was incomplete: it was written with pencil on both sides of the paper and no care taken to number the pages. In many places the lines are obscure and difficult to decipher. Where such was the case I have been forced to take some liberties with the verse, but always to the detriment of the poem. It would be bold assumption to pretend to improve on the finished versification of such a painstaking writer. Hence I have tried to follow copy in all instances where it was legible. The attempt to arrange the pages in their intended order of natural sequence has not been devoid of embarrassing difficulties, and complete success is far from being claimed. But the reader, I am sure, will pardon a few mistakes in this respect, in view of the wholesome feast of song herewith submitted.”

The Wreck of “The Wright”

The sun has set, and all alone
….The steamer battles with the sea;
Her plume of smoke is backward blown,
Beneath her prow, with bodeful moan,
….The conquering wave bends sullenly.
And, chill and drear, a shadow creeps
Along the wild and misty deeps
….That roll to windward and a-lee.

With maniac laughter, deep and low,
….The hungry caverns mock her way;
A pallid sea-bird, wheeling slow,
Shrieks to his mother-sea, below
….The hopeless flight of human prey;
And o’er the waste of water broods
The dreariest of Nature’s moods,
….Bereft of all save bleak dismay.

A sudden blenching strikes the sea
….To windward, and the fearful twang
Of Neptune’s trident hums a glee
Of might, and wrath, and agony,
….Far where the breakers boom and clang:
Like flying shrouds from rifled graves,
The pallid foam drifts on the waves,
….Whence ocean’s slumbering furies sprang.

Into the jeweled arms of night
….The mad storm leaps, his vap’ry hair
Drifts o’er her queenly breast bedight,
And quenches all its gemmy light;
….And down the corridors of air,
’Mong tapestries of cloud, the moon
Flits by with white, scared face, and soon
….Night and the storm hold empire there!

The stricken billows leap away
….With trampling thunders in the gale,
And straggering blindly to the fray,
The strong ship starts each bolt and stay;
….Her cordage shrieks, and with a wail
She plunges downward in the gloom
Of roaring gorges, hoarse with doom,
….And none alive may tell the tale.

What thoughts there came of home and friends,
….What prayers were said, what kisses thrown,
Were lost upon the wind, that lends
Its borrowed wealth no more, yet blends
….A sigh of trouble with the moan
That sadly haunts the restless waves—
Forever rolling o’er the caves
….Where richer things than pearls are strewn.

They sailed one day, and came—no more!
….All else is wrapt in mystery;
The surges kneel upon the shore,
And tell their sorrows o’er and o’er;
….And still above the northern sea,
A pensive spirit, pale and slow,
The gray gull, wheeling to and for,
….Keeps watch and ward eternally.

Published in The Pacific Coast Fifth Reader (1875); reprinted Oregon Native Son, September 1899; and The Golden-Gated West (1910). The steamer George S. Wright disappeared while sailing from Alaska to Portland, Oregon in January 1873. The mystery of what happened to the Wright has never been solved, although the steamer was presumed wrecked at sea, with no known survivors.

Biographical sources:
John B. Horner, Oregon Literature (Portland, Ore.: The J.K. Gill Co., 1902), 61-78; Alfred Powers, History of Oregon Literature (Portland, Ore.: Metropolitan Press, 1935), 289-304; Ralph Friedman, Tracking Down Oregon (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. Ltd., 1978), 58-70; Samuel Leonidas Simpson, The Gold-Gated West—Songs and Poems (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1910); “From Oregon,” Springfield (Mass) Republican, February 23, 1867, 3; “New Law Firm,” State Rights Democrat (Albany, Ore.), December 28, 1867, 3; “Oregon,” Morning Oregonian, March 6, 1871, 2; “Gone to a Wider Field,” State Rights Democrat, June 20, 1873, 3; Oregon State Journal (Eugene), November 7, 1874, 3; Oregon State Journal (Eugene), April 3, 1875, 3; “An Oregon Journalist,” Oregon Statesman (Salem, Ore.), June 15, 1899, 1; “Sam L. Simpson’s Poems,” Daily Journal (Salem, Ore.), July 11, 1899, n. p.; Morning Oregonian, July 18, 1899, 4; W. W. Fidler, “Camp-Fires of the Pioneers: Fragments of an Oregon Aeneid,” Pacific Monthly, 4, no. 3 (July 1900): 109-113; W. W. Fidler, “Personal Reminiscences of Western Poets,” Bonville’s Western Monthly, 4, no. 1 (July 1909): 20-26.

 

Joaquin Miller, Plagiarist?

 

To students of Oregon literature, the story of Minnie Myrtle and Joaquin Miller is a familiar one. The two young fledgling writers were both contributors to the Oregon Democrat of Albany in the early 1860s. Miller, enticed by one of Minnie Miller’s poems, wrote to her, and a romantic correspondence ensued. After a year long correspondence, he rode by horseback from Eugene City to her home near Cape Blanco on the southern Oregon coast, and after a five day courtship they were married. They lived as husband and wife for almost seven years before they were separated. Their divorce was finalized in April 1870. Joaquin Miller sailed to Europe and published his collection Songs of the Sierras in 1871, to international renown. Several volumes of poetry followed, and today many of his writings are still widely accessible via the internet. Meanwhile, Minnie Myrtle struggled financially after the divorce, and her efforts to provide for her children took precedence over her writing. The majority of her poems, never collected for publication, have been lost.

The few extant poems of Minnie Myrtle Miller, for the most part, are personal in nature, and help shed light on the relationship between herself and her husband, then known by his given name, Cincinnatus Hiner Miller.

One newly discovered poem is significant for another reason: it offers evidence that Joaquin Miller may have, in fact, plagiarized from his wife, as critics in Oregon alleged at the height of his fame. This poem was published in the Morning Oregonian on February 16, 1865, and reads as follows:

My Love

My love is strong, and pure, and true,
….Deem not it fickle, weak or vain,
It scorns itself; it lives for you,
….And when its fetters bring thee pain
….It does not die, but breaks the chain.

It would not check thy upward flight,
….It whispers “Go, and win thy fame,
Go, love; my heart with pure delight
….Will see the brightness of thy name
….And ever still be thine the same.

“The ship will seem a royal ship
….That bears thee from the quiet vale,
The winds will o’er the blue waves slip
….And gaily fill thy spreading sail,
….But my strong heart—it cannot fail.

“Content to walk a lowlier walk,
….I still will think of thee away—
The shining, listless earth will mock
….My lonesome heart day after day;
….The brooks will talk of thy delay.

“And amorous trees will wreathe their boughs,
….And scented flowers their wreaths entwine,
And whispering winds will breathe their vows,
….Reminding me of thine and mine
….The love-thrills of the old lang syne.

“God help thee to be good and true;
….And when the trump of fame shall tell
That thou art with the favored few
….That on the dizzy summit dwell
….Deem not but I will know it well.

“’Twill come to this still home some day
….‘The goal is won and fame is thine,’
And in a land far, far away
….The laurel with thy deeds entwine
….And I will whisper ‘He is mine.’”

A few lines from this prescient poem resurfaced five years later, in slightly modified form, in Joaquin Miller’s poem “Myrrh.” It has been claimed that “Myrrh” was written after Miller’s divorce from Minnie Myrtle, and first published in Eugene, Oregon on June 11, 1870 in the Oregon State Journal, as Miller was sailing for San Francisco en route to Europe. In reality, his poem had been written at least three months prior to the divorce, and was first published anonymously in the State Rights Democrat at Albany, Oregon. Before sailing for Europe, Miller revised his poem, added a few stanzas, and sent it to the Oregon State Journal for publication, this time signing it “C. H. Miller,” and dedicating it “To M. M. M.” It was further revised and expanded for the first American printing of Songs of the Sierras. Although “Myrrh” attracted little attention upon its first publication, it would later become one of Miller’s best-known poems. The following is Miller’s original poem, as published in the State Rights Democrat on January 28, 1870:

Myrrh

So here our paths of life at last
Divide—diverge like delta’d Nile,
Which after desert dangers passed
Of many and many a thousand mile,
As constant as a column stone,
Seeks out the sea divorced—alone.

What recks it now whose was the shame?
But call it mine, for better used
Am I to wrong and cold disdain—
Can better bear to be accused
Of all that bears the shape of shame
Than have you bear one touch of blame.

I know yours is the lighter heart
And yours the hope of grander need;
Yet did I falter in my part?—
But there is weakness in defeat,
And I had felt its iron stride
While your young feet were yet untried.

My face is set for power and place—
My soul is toned to sullenness—
My heart holds not one sign or trace
Of love, or trust, or tenderness;
But you—your years of happiness—
God knows I would not make them less.

But should you sometime read a sign—
A name among the princely few—
While you are with your friends and mine,
Then careless say to one or two,
“He once was mine—his smiles—his tears,
Were mine—were mine for years and years.”

And yet ’twere but a bootless strife;
I ran too swiftly up the hill
Of my uncheerful path of life,
And wearied soon; God guiding still,
He made life’s hill-top low, so low
I crossed its summit long ago.
Thus sooner than you would suppose
Some weary feet will find repose.

And you will come some summer eve,
When wheels the white moon on her track,
And hear the plaintive night bird grieve
And heed the crickets clad in black,
Alone—not far—a little spell—
And say, “well, yes, he loved me well.”

And say, “well, yes, I mind me now,
None were so gently kind as he,
And yet this love was tame somehow,
It was so truly true to me.
I wished his patient love had less
Of worship and of tenderness.”

“I wish it still, for this alone,
There comes a keen reproach, or pain,
Or feeling I dislike to own—
A yearning for his voice again,
For they who did so much profess
I learn, too late, loved me the less.”
//////*……… ……*……… ……*…… ………*
God keep you beautiful and true;
God keep you pure, O very pure;
God help you to endure and do
The all he may demand of you—
Keep time-frosts from your raven hair
And your glad heart without a care.

The relevant stanzas from each poem are juxtaposed below:

from “My Love”:

“God help thee to be good and true; ……………
….And when the trump of fame shall tell…….
That thou art with the favored few………………
….That on the dizzy summit dwell……………….
….Deem not but I will know it well……………..

“’Twill come to this still home some day……………
….‘The goal is won and fame is thine,’…………
And in a land far, far away…………………………..
….The laurel with thy deeds entwine………….
….And I will whisper ‘He is mine.’”…………….

from “Myrrh”:

But should you sometime read a sign—
A name among the princely few—
While you are with your friends and mine,
Then careless say to one or two,
“He once was mine—his smiles—his tears,
Were mine—were mine for years and years.”
……….*…………….*…………….*….,,,…….*
God keep you beautiful and true;
God keep you pure, O very pure;
God help you to endure and do
The all he may demand of you—

Few of Minnie Myrtle’s early poems survive, so it is uncertain if this poetic borrowing was an isolated incident. If Miller intentionally borrowed her words, he altered them enough that they appeared almost original. Perhaps this was meant merely as a personal message to his ex-wife; one he knew she would recognize. That Miller meant for Minnie to see “Myrrh” is suggested not only by his signature “C. H. Miller,” but also his dedication of the poem “To M. M. M.” Few at the time, outside family and friends, would have recognized the names behind the initials.

Minnie Myrtle, residing at Portland, Oregon when Miller’s revised “Myrrh” appeared in the Oregon State Journal, did see his poem, and her poetic reply, “Sacrifice Impetro,” published in the Daily Oregon Herald on June 16, 1870, includes this particularly salient passage:

….And he, through books and bays,
Delveth for pretty words
….To weave in his languid lays,
Of women, and streams, and birds.
….What was my troth to him?
….A stepping-stone, at best;
My face was proud and my smiles were sweet,
….And his gold could do the rest.

Decked with my love, for a time;
….But the day and the hour came
When he pushed the face you loved in the dust,
….And stepped to his niche of fame.

This bit of newspaper verse, like Minnie Myrtle’s other poems, was soon forgotten after publication, but was rescued from obscurity one year later, after news of Miller’s success in London reached Oregon. Harrison Kincaid, editor of the Oregon State Journal, was in Washington, D. C. serving as clerk in the United States Senate, and in late June or early July 1871 began to read in the eastern papers about a “new California poet” creating a sensation in London. Upon further investigation, he discovered this poet was actually his former schoolmate and rival newspaper editor from Oregon, Cincinnatus Hiner Miller. Kincaid immediately composed a letter on the subject of Miller, identifying him as “an Oregonian,” and sent it to the editor of the Washington Sunday Morning Chronicle for publication. Of “Myrrh” he wrote:

[Miller’s] last production before leaving the shores of the Pacific was a parting farewell to his wife, entitled “Myrr,” [sic] and addressed to “M. M. M.” —Minnie Myrtle Miller. It was published over his signature on the 11th of June, a few days after his departure (he carrying away an advance proof-sheet), in the Oregon State Journal, which, although Republican, was the paper he selected as the medium of most of his publications, as his father, brothers, and nearly all his warmest personal friends were of that school of politics. To this production his wife published a reply in verse, soon after his departure, in which she criticised him in severe terms. (see “Joaquin Miller, the New California Poet,” Buffalo Daily Courier, July 14, 1871)

Kincaid wrote about Miller again in his weekly “Letter from Washington” to the Oregon State Journal. This letter, written on July 5, 1871, began with coverage of the the ratification and formal proclamation of the Treaty of Washington, which had taken place a day earlier, before Kincaid turned his attention to Miller. Similar in content to the letter he had written to the Sunday Morning Chronicle, this new letter dispensed with much of the biographical material, as “the readers of the Journal will readily recognize C. H. Miller, a resident of Lane county from boyhood.” He had this to say concerning “Myrrh”:

Before leaving Eugene City for Europe, early in June of last year, [Miller] handed me a manuscript poem entitled “Myrr,” [sic] and addressed to “M. M. M.” his wife, from whom he had separated. This was his last production before leaving the shores of the Pacific to try his fortune in a foreign land. It was published, over his signature, in the Journal of June 11th, 1870, and was considered by the author the finest thing he had ever written up to that time. The lady to whom it was addressed afterwards replied in verse through some other paper, I believe it was the Daily Herald. (“Letter from Washington,” Oregon State Journal, July 22, 1871, 2)

Kincaids letters concerning Miller were copied extensively in newspapers from coast to coast, and helped create interest in both “Myrrh” and “Sacrifice Impetro.” The two poems were widely reprinted over the next few months, especially in Oregon.

The aforementioned lines from “Sacrifice Impetro” take on new meaning when it is remembered they were written one year prior to the publication of Songs of the Sierras, and before Joaquin Miller had made a name for himself as a poet. The editor of the State Rights Democrat interpreted these lines from Minnie’s poem as an admission by her that Joaquin had pilfered from her writings. The following scathing indictment of Miller appeared in the August 4, 1871 issue:

C. H. Miller, ex-editor of the Eugene Register and ex-County Judge of Grant county, has published a book of poems and become a man of fame in London. The fact makes us think no more of Miller, but much less of the Londoners.

During the time that he was connected with the Register, he published one or more serial stories under his own name and called them original. They were, however, stolen bodily from some of the flash publications of that day. The plagiarism was palpable and audacious. For particulars, we refer the curious to the files of the paper named, of, if we mistake not, the year 1862, in the Librarian’s office at Salem. After his marriage, which took place in the year named, and after he began to write poetry, this habit of plagiarism was not abandoned, if his wife’s testimony is worth anything and if we do not misinterpret the following quotation taken from her “Sacrifice Impetro,” a reply to Miller’s “Farewell” on leaving Oregon:

…………“And he through books and bays
……………..Delveth for pretty words
…………To weave in his languid lays
…………….Of women and streams and birds.”

For this and many other better reasons we don’t hesitate to pronounce the belief that this so-called poet is, what is termed in the vernacular of this coast, a first-class bilk, and that besides the other injuries that he has inflicted upon his unhappy wife, he has filched from her literary jewels and published them as his own.

Up to the date of his marriage Miller had published no poetry, if indeed he had written any. But up to that time and for a long time prior thereto, the people of this State had been charmed by the verses of Mrs. Miller, then “Minnie Myrtle.” Minnie Myrtle’s poetry left off where Miller’s begun. Those who take the trouble to compare Miller’s Joaquin, et al., with these verses of Mrs. Miller, published more than ten years ago, will readily detect her poetic genius upon the best pages of the book. In some of them they will recognize the woman, as for instance in the Sierra Nevadas, which makes them look

…………“As though Diana’s maid last night,
…………Had in liquid soft moonlight,
…………Washed out her mistress’ garments bright,
…………And on yon bent and swaying line
…………Hung all her linen out to dry.”

It is much more likely that the simile of a line hung with linen and which employs the idea of washing garments in liquid moonlight, should occur to a woman of strong poetic imagination, the routine of whose life was the wash-tub and the kitchen, than to a languid and dyspeptic man. The quotation has the credit of being the best in the book.

…………The lines—
……………………“What was my troth to him?
……………………..A stepping-stone at best;”
in Mrs. Miller’s reply to Miller’s “Farewell,” seems to be evidence against him upon the charge of appropriating his wife’s literary productions. The italics are used by us.

None of these claims made by the editor of the State Rights Democrat can be verified, however. Instead of giving specific examples of Miller’s plagiarism, the editor simply tells his readers to compare Miller’s verse with that of his ex-wife, “published more than ten years ago” (circa 1861). Unfortunately, these poems are now lost. The editor likewise fails to name the “flash publications” from which Miller supposedly plagiarized, instead referring the curious researcher to the Librarian’s office at Salem to view the files of the Democratic Register (Miller’s newspaper) for the year 1862. The editor also seems unaware Miller had been a contributor to the Oregon Democrat in the 1860s, often signing his pieces “Giles Gaston.” These writings in the Oregon Democrat may actually be the ones to which the editor was referring when he alleged Miller had “stolen bodily from some of the flash publications of that day.”“Annie Vernon the Authoress,” for example, was published in the Oregon Democrat on May 28, 1861, credited to “Giles Gaston,” one of Miller’s pseudonyms. Miller reprinted this complete story in the Eugene City Review (not the Register) on November 1, 1862, retitled “The Authoress,” and signed by a different name, “DeWeiver.”

Many in Oregon shared the Democrat’s belief that Joaquin was plagiarizing his wife’s poems and publishing them as his own. In an 1872 letter to a Louisville newspaper, an anonymous correspondent from San Francisco called Joaquin Miller “a heartless, selfish, literary fraud,” and claimed that “the Songs of the Sierras, and all of the most popular productions of the rising Western poet, are actually the productions of Mrs. Joaquin Miller…but she refuses to claim the productions of her own fertile and imaginative brain, preferring to live ̒unwept, unhonored, and unsung,’ to bringing dishonor upon the head of him whom she loves with a true womanly devotion.” (February 2, 1872)

Thomas H. Brents was working as county clerk of Grant County when Joaquin Miller was practicing law in Canyon City, and was well-acquainted with both Joaquin and Minnie. “His wife’s name was Minnie Myrtle and I remember she used to write some excellent poetry,” he told Fred Lockley of the Oregon journal. “Heine used to come around once in a while or, rather, twice in a while and that was pretty often, to read poems to us, claiming that he was the author of them. I remember one that struck me particularly was a poem called “Gettysburg.” We talked it over among ourselves and decided that Miller was something of a fraud and was palming off his wife’s poetry as his own. However, as he continued to turn out poetry after his wife left him we came to the conclusion that the work was probably his own.” (Lockley)

Even George Sterling, who became a close friend of Miller in the 1890’s, believed Miller had published some of his wife’s writings as his own. In an article on Miller written for the American Mercury, Sterling stated:

Like Swinburne’s also, [Miller’s] poems lend themselves to a general aesthetic impact rather than to quotation of particular lines or passages. He was not a maker of great lines, and his perhaps most magical ones were not his own creation at all, but written and given to him by his first wife, Minnie Myrtle:

…………And ever and ever His boundless blue,
…………And ever and ever His green, green sod,
…………And ever and ever between the two
…………Walk the wonderful winds of God.

I doubt if Joaquin ever admitted his obligation in the matter. I had the information for a woman who had been one of Minnie Myrtle’s closest friends. (Sterling)

Charges of plagiarism continued to follow Miller throughout his life. Colonel W. H. Moss, press agent for the Calhoun Opera Company, claimed to have known the Miller family when they lived in Eugene, Oregon and said that most of Miller’s poetry was actually written by Oregon poet Samuel Leonidas Simpson (1845-1899). “After Joaquin Miller, having made more or less of a success at signing poetry, which I think seriously was written by some one else, he fell into a large piece of luck,” Moss told the Oakland Tribune. “In Corvallis was a young attorney named Sam L. Simpson, a graduate of Willamette University…Simpson could write poetry, drunk or sober, the only trouble being that he wasn’t picturesque enough to sell it. Miller, who know a good thing when he sees it, got hold of young Simpson and—well, you know the rest. A delighted reading public has ever since enjoyed reading the poetry and other things signed by Joaquin Miller, most of which was written by a disciple of Bacchus and rejoicing in the plebeian and unromantic name of ̒Sam L. Simpson.’” (June 23, 1893) Moss, however, gives no evidence to back up his assertions, nor does he provide a plausible explanation of how or why Simpson would have allowed Miller to take his poems and publish them as his own.

Newspaper editor Henry Clinton Parkhurst, who had written an article about Miller, “The Border Life of Joaquin Miller,” for the August 1872 Lakeside Monthly, later alleged that some of his own poems had been plagiarized by Miller. Parkhurst claimed that in New York City in the winter of 1892 he showed Miller a manuscript of poems he was preparing for publication, and that several of these poems were afterwards appropriated by Miller. In his retelling of the incident, Parkhurst did not mince words: “They were stolen out of my manuscript.” (see “Book Pirates” in Parkhurst Collection) One of these poems, “The Voyage of Columbus,” according to Parkhurst, later resurfaced as Miller’s famous poem “Columbus.” A comparison of these two poems shows that they do share the same subject and the famous line “sail on.” Otherwise, however, they appear to have little in common (See Miller’s poem “Columbus” and “Evolution of a Poem” in Parkhurst’s Songs of a Man Who Failed, pages 282-283). Parkhurst did not name the other poems he alleged were cribbed from his manuscript by Miller, so it is impossible at this time to make any further comparisons.

So was Joaquin Miller really a plagiarist? There may not be a definitive answer to this question. Miller’s friend and biographer Harr Wagner admits that while Miller “was an autoplagiarist and often lifted lines from one poem and placed them in another poem in a different setting,” he denies that Miller ever plagiarized from other poets. Some biographers have noted Miller’s debt to Byron in his early poems, and his later imitations of Browning and Swinburne, but unfortunately very little scholarly attention has been focused on Miller’s works, particularly those written before he became famous. For now, the only concrete evidence of Joaquin Miller’s plagiarism comes in the form of an obscure poem published by his wife in 1865.

Sources:
“Such is Fame,” State Rights Democrat, August 4, 1871, 2; “Personal,” Pittsburgh Commercial, February 2, 1872, 2; Fred Lockley, “In the Days of the Pony Express” Oregon Daily Journal, November 10, 1912, [n.p] (57); “Hot on Joaquin,” Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, June 23, 1893, 8; George Sterling, “Joaquin Miller,” American Mercury, February 1926, 229; Harr Wagner, Joaquin Miller and his Other Self (San Francisco: Harr Wagner Publishing Company, 1929), 230; Henry Clinton Parkhurst, Songs of a Man Who Failed: The Poetical Works of Henry Clinton Parkhurst (Lincoln, Neb: The Woodward Press, 1921), 282-83; Henry Clinton Parkhurst Collection, 1862-1921, Ms 16, Special Collections, State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

 

Ina Coolbrith (1841-1928)

Ina Coolbrith, California’s first poet laureate, was known variously as “Sappho of the west” and the “Sweet Singer of California.” She was perhaps California’s best-known nineteenth-century poet, but her poems have been largely forgotten.

Named Josephine Donna Smith after her uncle Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion, Coolbrith was born on March 10, 1841 in Nauvoo, Illinois. Her father Don Carlos Smith, youngest brother of the Mormon prophet, died five months after Ina was born, and soon after her mother Agnes Moulton Coolbrith entered a polygamist marriage with Joseph Smith, becoming his sixth plural wife. After the 1844 martyrdom of Smith in an Illinois jail by an anti-Mormon mob, Agnes fled with her children to St. Louis, where she married a printer named William Pickett. Eventually Pickett took his family to California, and they traveled by covered wagon along the overland trail, crossing the Sierra Nevadas at Beckwourth Pass. They first settled in Marysville, north of Sacramento, and after a brief sojourn in San Francisco, they moved to Los Angeles.

Young Josephine, called “Inez” by her family, began writing poetry at an early age. Her first published poem, “My Childhood’s Home,” appeared in the Los Angeles Star on August 30, 1856, when she was fifteen years old. Over the next five years she contributed several poems to the Star and the California Home Journal under the pen name “Ina.”

She was married on April 21, 1858, at age seventeen, to a man named Robert Bruce Carsley. He was physically abusive and the marriage only lasted three years. It has been claimed that sometime during the three years of her marriage Ina gave birth to an infant son who died shortly after childbirth.

Sometime after the divorce Ina moved with her mother and step-father to San Francisco. Seeking a fresh start, as well as to distance herself from her Mormon past, she changed her name, taking her pen name “Ina” as her first name, and adding for her surname her mother’s maiden name Coolbrith. She soon found work as a school teacher in San Francisco. Meanwhile she continued to write poetry, and was a contributor to the Golden Era, the Californian and other local periodicals.

Coolbrith soon became acquainted with Charles Warren Stoddard and Bret Harte, and through their work together on the Overland Monthly, a prestigious literary journal published in San Francisco, they became known as the “Golden Gate Trinity.” As one of the foremost literary figures in San Francisco, Coolbrith befriended other important writers of the day, including Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and Joaquin Miller. Coolbrith had been introduced to Miller in 1870 by Stoddard, shortly before Miller sailed for England and achieved international acclaim as “The Poet of the Sierras.” Coolbrith later claimed it was she who had first suggested Miller change his name from Cincinnatus Hiner Miller to Joaquin Miller, after his poem of the same name. Miller later brought his Indian daughter Calla Shasta to live with Coolbrith, and she cared for the young woman for more than seven years.

Coolbrith was forced to cancel a planned 1873 trip to Europe when her sister Agnes, who was to have taken care of their elderly mother during her absence, became seriously ill and moved into Coolbrith’s home with her two young children. Agnes died shortly afterward, and Coolbrith raised her sister’s niece and nephew as her own. She soon moved her household to Oakland and into a larger home.

Although known for her poetry, Coolbrith received very little remuneration for her verse, and out of economic necessity she accepted a position as librarian at the Oakland Public Library in 1874. The long hours at the library left her with little time to write. Nevertheless, during her years as librarian she served as a mentor to the many young children who visited the library, and among those who later recognized her influence were dancer Isadora Duncan and writer Jack London. In 1892, after eighteen years of service at the public library, Coolbrith was fired by the board of directors and replaced by her nephew. She later moved back to San Francisco and accepted a part-time job as librarian of the Bohemian Club.

Coolbrith was stricken with peritonitis in July 1895. The doctors did not think she would survive, but a few months later she miraculously recovered. A book of her poems, Songs from the Golden Gate, was immediately rushed to the press by her publisher. It included many of the poems from her previously published A Perfect Day, and Other Poems (1881), and is probably her best-known work.

The earthquake that struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906 devastated the city, and in the fires that followed Coolbrith lost her home and nearly all her worldly possessions, including her unfinished manuscripts. One of these was a nearly completed history of California literature which she had planned to publish. With the assistance of friends a new house was later built for Coolbrith on Russian Hill.

In her later years Coolbrith moved to New York City, and here some of her finest poetry was written. She returned to California in 1923, and spent the last five years of her life at the home of a niece in Berkeley, where she died on February 29, 1928. Coolbrith is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.

During her lifetime Coolbrith was accorded many honors. In 1871 she became the first female to be asked to write a commencement ode for the graduating class of the University of California at Berkeley. She was was elected President of the Congress of Authors and Journalists before the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, at which she was unofficially named Poet Laureate of California. Four years later she was officially recognized as California’s first Poet Laureate by the California state legislature.

Further recognition came after her death. In 1932 the United States Geographic Board named a nearly 8,000 foot tall mountain in the Sierra Nevada range, near Beckwourth pass, Mt. Ina Coolbrith in her honor. In San Francisco, a small park near Coolbrith’s home on Russian Hill was named Ina Coolbrith Park, and is acclaimed for its magnificent views of the city. In 2016 a walking path in Berkeley was renamed Ina Coolbrith Path.

Additionally, the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize is given each year to the best unpublished poem or group of poems by an undergraduate student at any of the University of California campuses, and the Ina Coolbrith Circle, formed while Coolbrith was still living, is a group devoted to honoring the poetry and history of California, and still meets regularly to this day.

Even though her poetical works may be forgotten, Ina Coolbrith’s name will likely be remembered for many years to come.

San Francisco

In ended days, a child, I trod thy sands
….The sands unbuilded rank with brush and brier
And blossom—chased the sea-foam on thy strands,
….Young city of my love and my desire!

I saw thy barren hills against the skies,
….I saw them topped with minaret and spire,
On plain and slope thy myriad walls arise,
….Fair city of my love and desire.

With thee the Orient touched heart and hands;
….The world’s rich argosies lay at thy feet;
Queen of the fairest land of all the lands,—
….Our Sunset-Glory, proud and strong and sweet!

I saw thee in thine anguish! tortured, prone,
….Rent with the earth-throes, garmented in fire!
Each wound upon thy breast upon my own,
….Sad city of my love and my desire.

Gray wind-blown ashes, broken, toppling wall
….And ruined hearth,—are these thy funeral pyre?
Black desolation covering as a pall,—
….Is this the end, my love and my desire?

Nay, strong, undaunted, thoughtless of despair,
….The Will that builded thee shall build again,
And all thy broken promise spring more fair,
….Thou mighty mother of as mighty men!

Thou wilt arise invincible, supreme!
….The earth to voice thy glory never tire,
And song, unborn, shall chant no nobler theme,
….Proud city of my love and my desire.

But I—shall see thee ever as of old!
….Thy wraith of pearl, wall, minaret, and spire,
Framed in the mists that veil thy Gate of Gold
….Lost city of my love and my desire.

Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, October 1906; Wings of Sunset (1929). In Wings of Sunset this poem was titled “San Francisco. April 18, 1906,” and after the date was included the following footnote: “Date of the great earthquake and fire which devastated San Francisco.”

The Mariposa Lily

Insect or blossom? Fragile, fairy thing,
Poised upon slender tip, and quivering
….To flight! a flower of the fields of air;
….A jeweled moth; a butterfly, with rare
And tender tints upon his downy wing
….A moment resting in our happy sight;
….A flower held captive by a thread so slight
Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer
Are, light as the wind, with every wind astir,—
….Wafting sweet odor, faint and exquisite.
O dainty nursling of the field and sky,
….What fairer thing looks up to heaven’s blue
….And drinks the noontide sun, the dawning’s dew?
Thou wingëd bloom! thou blossom-butterfly!

First published in A Christmas Greeting Expressed in Paintings and Poems of California Wild Flowers by Helen R. Chamberlain (1886). The above is as printed in Songs from the Golden Gate (1895); also published in Wings of Sunset (1929)

The Poet

He walks with God upon the hills!
….And sees, each morn, the world arise
….New-bathed in light of paradise.
He hears the laughter of her rills,
….Her melodies of many voices,
….And greets her while his heart rejoices.
She to his spirit undefiled,
Makes answer as a little child;
….Unveiled before his eyes she stands,
….And gives her secrets to his hands.

Century, December 1885; Songs from the Golden Gate (1895)

Evenfall at the Gate

A rose-shot purple on the sunset hills,
….And skies of golden fire;
Silence that, like a benediction, fills
….The hour, save where the lyre
Of ocean throbs in strains that fall and rise
….Against the harbor bar;
Then dusk, and on the brow of Tamalpais
….Trembles a single star.

Sunset, December 1909; Wings of Sunset (1929)

An Answer

The wind was very sad among the branches,
….The moon had hid its light;
I threw my window open to the darkness,
….And looked out on the night,

And thought of all the dear old times together—
….Days sweet for her sweet sake —
And all I lost in losing her, till, thinking,
….My heart seemed like to break.

And O, I said, if I might have some token —
….She is, and yet is mine —
Though but a wind-tossed leaf, my soul would take it,
….And bless it, for the sign.

And lo! a little wind sighed through the branches,
….The moon shone on the land,
And cool and moist with the night-dew, a leaflet
….Fluttered against my hand!

Overland Monthly, August 1870; A Perfect Day, and Other Poems (1881); Songs from the Golden Gate (1895)

In the Grand Cañon

The strongholds these of those strange, mighty gods
Who walked the earth before man’s feeble race,
And, passing hence to their unknown abodes
In farther worlds, left here their awful trace.
Turrets, and battlements, and toppling towers,
That spurn the torrent foaming at their base,
And pierce the clouds, uplifting into space.
No sound is here, save where the river pours
Its ice-born flood, or when the tempests sweep
In rush of battle, and the lightnings leap
In thunder to the cliffs; no wing outspread
Above these walls, lone and untenanted
By man or beast, — but where the eagle soars
Above the crags, — and by the gates they guard,
Huge, and as motionless, on either hand,
The rock-hewn sentinels in silence stand,
Through the long centuries keeping watch and ward.
Up from the sheer abysses that we tread,
Wherein pale Shadow holds her mystic sway,
And night yields never wholly to the day,
To where, in narrowing light far overhead,
Arch capping arch and peak to peak is wed,
We gaze, and veil our eyes in silent awe,
As when Jehovah’s form the prophet saw.

Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, September 1892; Songs from the Golden Gate (1895)

The Unsolvable

What use the questioning? this thing we are:
….A breath called life, housed for a little space
In how infinitesimal a star;—
….Then vanished, leaving neither sound nor trace.

Wings of Sunset (1929)

All

An hour to live—to be!
….To laugh, to weep, to sigh!
An hour to love, alas!—
….And then to die.

Why take one thought of care
….For aught ’twixt birth and death,
When all is compassed in
….So brief a breath?

Wings of Sunset (1929)

Beside the Dead

It must be sweet, O thou, my dead, to lie
….With hands that folded are from every task;
Sealed with the seal of the great mystery
….The lips, that nothing answer, nothing ask.
The life-long struggle ended; ended quite
….The weariness of patience, and of pain;
And the eyes closed to open not again
….On desolate dawn or dreariness of night.
It must be sweet to slumber and forget —
….To have the poor tired heart so still, at last:
Done with all yearning, done with all regret,
….Doubt, fear, hope, sorrow, all forever past —
Past all the hours, or slow of wing or fleet —
….It must be sweet, it must be very sweet!

Overland Monthly, May 1875; A Perfect Day, and Other Poems (1881); Songs from the Golden Gate (1895); Wings of Sunset (1929)

When the Grass Shall Cover Me

….When the grass shall cover me,
Head to foot where I am lying;
……When not any wind that blows,
……Summer-blooms nor winter-snows,
Shall awake me to your sighing:
……Close above me as you pass,
……You will say: “How kind she was,”
……You will say: “How true she was,”
….When the grass grows over me.

….When the grass shall cover me,
Holden close to earth’s warm bosom;
……While I laugh, or weep, or sing,
……Nevermore, for anything:
You will find in blade and blossom,
……Sweet small voices, odorous,
……Tender pleaders in my cause,
……That shall speak me as I was—
….When the grass grows over me.

….When the grass shall cover me!
Ah, beloved, in my sorrow
..….Very patient, I can wait—
……Knowing that, or soon or late,
There will dawn a clearer morrow:
……When your heart will moan: “Alas!
……Now I know how true she was;
……Now I know how dear she was”—
….When the grass grows over me!

Overland Monthly, November 1868; A Perfect Day, and Other Poems (1881); Songs from the Golden Gate (1895); Wings of Sunset (1929)

Biographical Sources:
Aleta George, Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California’s First Poet Laureate (Shifting Plates Press, 2015); “American Poets of To-day: Ina Coolbrith,” Current Literature: A Magazine of Contemporary Record 28, (April 1900), 16; George Wharton James, “Ina Donna Coolbrith: An Historical Sketch and Appreciation,” National Magazine 28 (June 1907), 315-22; “From Across the Bay,” San Francisco Call, October 5, 1892, 7; “From Across the Bay,” San Francisco Call, December 10, 1892; “A Book Guild for San Francisco,” San Francisco Call, April 7, 1895, 21; “Ina Coolbrith Dying,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, July 28, 1895, 1; “Note,” San Francisco Call, September 8, 1895, 17; “Ina Coolbrith, California Poet Laureate, Dead,” Roseburg [Oregon] News-Review, February 29, 1928, 4; “Forgotten Newsmakers,” https://forgottennewsmakers.com/2010/09/01/ina-coolbrith-1841-%E2%80%93-1928-1st-poet-laureate-of-california-librarian/ (accessed November 18, 2017)

 

Annie Pike Greenwood (1879-1956)

Annie Pike Greenwood was once a well-respected writer whose works appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Century, and other prestigious literary publications, but she is remembered primarily for We Sagebrush Folks, a memoir of her fifteen years as a farmer’s wife on an irrigated farm in southern Idaho.

She was born Annie L. (Lippman?) Pike on November 16,1879 in Provo, Utah. Her father, Dr. Walter Randall Pike, was the first superintendent of the Utah State Mental Hospital. Annie received her early education at the Proctor Academy in Provo. Later, although not a Mormon, she attended Brigham Young University (then known as Brigham Young Academy), graduating as class valedictorian in 1900.

She taught elementary school at Payson, Utah for one year, before traveling east to begin her graduate studies in English and literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After returning to Provo in 1902, Annie obtained a position as an English instructor at Brigham Young Academy, and then taught for one term at the Utah Agricultural College in Logan (now Utah State University). She afterward accepted a job with the public high school in Eureka, Utah, teaching literature, elocution and drawing.

During the summer break, after her first year of teaching at Eureka, Annie was hired as a reporter by the Salt Lake Tribune, becoming, according to her own later recollections, Salt Lake City’s “first girl reporter” and the Tribune’s first local columnist. She spent more than a year at the Tribune, after which she decided to pursue other journalistic opportunities. She traveled to Los Angeles, California in September 1905, with the hope of obtaining employment at one of the many newspapers in that city. The day after her arrival, however, she ran into an old acquaintance from Salt Lake City, Charles Oliver Greenwood, and he proposed; that evening they were married. As Charles told a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald: “She came to Los Angeles two days ago and by accident I met her on the street. I asked her what she was doing here and she said she was about to go on one of the local papers, and I said she was destined for a different fate, and I proposed.” (September 20, 1905)

After eight months in Los Angeles, the newlyweds moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Before the end of the year they had moved again, this time to Kansas, residing first at Deerfield and later at Garden City. Two children were born while in Kansas: Walter Pike Greenwood, born on December 23, 1907, and Charles Oliver Greenwood, Jr. born August 1, 1911.

The 1894 Carey Act and the prospect of cheap land enticed the Greenwoods in 1913 to migrate to southern Idaho, “the last frontier of the United States,” where they obtained 160 acres near the town of Hazelton, then part of the new Minidoka Irrigation Project. On their Idaho farm they grew cabbages, sugar beets, and later wheat.

Annie taught school for one year at the small one-room schoolhouse in Hazelton, later named the Greenwood School in her honor. She also became active in civic affairs: she was one of the founders of the Grange in Hazleton, organized the first Sunday School in the district, and founded a literary society. Her husband Charles was elected to the Idaho state legislature in 1918.

Two additional children were born to the Greenwoods in Idaho: Rhoda Lippman Greenwood, born September 29, 1914, and Joseph Lippman Greenwood, born September 6, 1916.

Eventually the stress of farm life took its toll, and around 1920 Annie suffered a nervous breakdown and was taken to Portland, Oregon for treatment. After her recovery she went back to teaching, and at the recommendation of Ida M. Sullivan, county superintendent of schools in Hazleton, was hired as head of the history and English departments at Acequia High School. In 1924 she obtained a teaching position at the Idaho Technical Institute in Pocatello, and there taught English and served as debate coach. That summer she completed her master’s degree at the University of Utah.

After much hard work, and heavily in debt, the Greenwoods lost their farm four years later. They moved to nearby Twin Falls, but shortly afterward Annie left her husband and moved to Salt Lake City. Back in her home state of Utah, she wrote and produced radio dramas and taught English at the Salt Lake City adult evening high school. In 1934 she published We Sagebrush Folks, chronicling her fifteen years as a farmer’s wife in southern Idaho. Despite critical praise, the book was not a commercial success.

In 1938 Annie turned to politics, running unsuccessfully as the democratic candidate for the Utah state senate. Two years later she moved to Ogden, Utah, where she lived with her daughter Rhoda for ten years. For reasons unknown she moved to Sacramento, California in 1950. She died in Sacramento on February 23, 1956 and is interred at the Provo City Cemetery in Provo, Utah.

Annie Pike’s first poems were published in the Salt Lake Herald when she was fifteen years old. She later contributed both prose and poetry to the Century Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Nation, but the majority of her published works can be found in the local periodicals of the communities in which she lived. Her only book of poems, This is My Song, was a small pamphlet of verse containing sixteen of her poems. No publication date is listed, but it was probably published in the 1930s.

“Even though Annie Pike Greenwood never achieved fame or fortune in her lifetime, the Greenwood name is not entirely forgotten in Idaho,” wrote Jo Ann Ruckman in the afterward to the 1988 reprint of We Sagebrush Folks. “The area around their old farm is still referred to as the Greenwood district, and there yet stands a building bearing the name ‘Greenwood Community Sunday School.’”

Stupid Fellow

I was coming down the stair;
….He was standing in the hall,
….And he looked so grand and tall,
As he stood and watched me there.
….Gliding by with smiling look,
….I would pass him, but he took
Both my hands and whispered near:
“Won’t you kiss me, pretty dear?”

Oh, the stupidness of men!
….What could I have said but “No,”
….Blushingly, and bid him go,
And not bother me again?
….Then he left, nor knew my mask.
….Stupid fellow!—not to ask—
(Though why not steal one quick, instead?)
He thought I meant just what I said!

Provo

Salt Lake Herald, August 30, 1896

I Cannot Pray

I cannot pray tonight—there is no prayer
Within my heart; ’tis only numbness there:
It seems as if my life were standing still.
I have no wish, no power; I have no will
To pray. I murmur “Father” and “Amen,”
And try to pray but say the same again.
Dull aching and contented discontent—
Oh! that in common tears it might be spent,
What does it matter that my pearls were sand?
I cannot pray, but God will understand

Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake Herald, January 24, 1897

The Farmer’s Wife and Her Poem

When I was young I used to write, and so I shall again,—
(But I must start the fire at once for dinner for the men.)

I’ll write about last night: the clouds were billowing up the sky
(I cannot get the oven hot enough to bake this pie.)

The moon was like a wistful bride, so tender and so true,—
(These biscuits will be just the things to serve with chicken stew.)
As through the aisle of clouds she went, her veil a floating mist—
(Barbed wire, Joe? Don’t cry, my boy; I’ll iodine your wrist.)

Where was I?—When I wash these towels and mix that batch of dough,
And wash the dinner dishes, sweep, mop, and when I hoe
The garden, churn the butter, bake a cake, and when I sew
These sugar sacks into a dress, and make that shirt for Joe,
And iron these clothes, and make some jam, and help the men to mow,—
And when I’ve staked tomato plants so that the wind can’t blow
Them over,—then, if it isn’t time to cook again, I’ll go
…………….And write that poem.

This is My Song (n. d.)

As I Wear a Gown

For I must wear my love for you
as I wear a gown,
all delicate and glistening,
to dances in the town.
And I must laugh and dance in it,
and at the deep of night,
I’ll take my lovely gown off
and hang it out of sight.
And I must not shed any tears,
nor feel a pang again,
though I must wear my lovely gown
to dance with other men.

Idaho’s Poetry: a Centennial Anthology (1988). It is not known if this poem was ever published during Greenwood’s lifetime.

Two Roads

There was a road whose sun was bright,
And yellow moon, and flowers white;
I had no armor then to fight.

This is the road where high winds blow,
And here the trail is swept with snow;
Others may falter—here I go.

Salt Lake Tribune, January 22, 1905; reprinted in the Young Woman’s Journal, May 1911

Remembering

Remembering, I hear the waters rushing by,
And see as yestere’en the serried stars,
And feel again the dark that clung about us,
The freedom from all sense of human nearness
Save thine alone;—and then I would recall
Thy spoken words, but no sound comes to me
Except the waters in the hidden creek—
Remembering, I hear the waters rushing by.

Young Woman’s Journal, April 1907

Dust of the Country Road

The dust of the country road lies quiet and dull
In the heat of the afternoon sun.
As I gaze, a spot wavers and stirs, rises and whirls—
Rises, whirls onward and fades; rises, whirls onward and fades;
Rises, whirls onward and fades.

It is the dust of one who has lain through the years
Yearning and dreaming until it has passioned the strength
To be up and away.

I, too, am dust; I, too, yearn and dream.
O happy Dust! when shall I rise and away?

“O living Dust! nothing can rise of itself.
I lay here praying, expectant, awaiting.
Till the arms of God, through His breezes,
Lifted me up, and bade me be gone.”

Hazelton, Idaho.

Journal of Education, December 18, 1919

Death

We are like women shut in familiar walls,
….Content to tread these safe, secluded floors,
Drawing the blinds upon those shadowy halls,
….Hung ’round with pictures of that Great Outdoors.

Then at the whispered word, fearful at best,
….Dreading the country strange which lies without,
By dim, neglected windows unconfessed—
….At length, alone, we open the door of Doubt.

Wonder on wonder—all discovery lies—
….Dreamed-of or read, and wholly unforetold—
Out there: the soul sings under open skies,
….Watching an infinite, deathless spring unfold.

Young Woman’s Journal, July 1920

The Little Girl Wonders

I wonder what the dead folks think of us?—
And if they look down in my heart and see
The naughty, ugly thoughts I keep in me?

And if they can, do they hold up their hands
Before their eyes, because it makes them sad
To see how good I seem, and ye inside how bad?

When I was just the littlest girl she left—
My mother—and if I keep good inside
Will she stay near me, even though she died?

Young Woman’s Journal, June 1922

Update (September 29, 2018): In June 2017, Idaho State University acquired the Annie Pike Greenwood Collection, a collection of Greenwood’s published and unpublished writings. I have recently been informed by staff at Special Collections and Archives at Idaho State University that selected items from this collection will be on display at the Eli M. Oboler Library from October 1, 2018 to October 31, 2018. A special reception for this display will be held on October 18, 2018 at 5pm on the library’s first floor, and among those attending will be H. Kinsley Thurber III, grandson of Greenwood (and donor of the collection), and Marcia Franklin, producer of the “Idaho Experience” for PBS Idaho. Greenwood is the subject of an upcoming episode of “Idaho Experience,” scheduled to air on October 25, 2018. For more information contact staff at the Eli M. Oboler Library:
921 S. 8th Avenue Stop 8089,
Pocatello, Idaho 83209
208-282-3249
isuarchs@isu.edu

Biographical sources: Annie Pike Greenwood, We Sagebrush Folks, (Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1988); “B. Y. A. Notes,” Salt Lake Herald, September 24, 1899, 6; “Payson Pointers,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 1900, 7; “B. Y. A. Items,” Coalville Times, October 25, 1901, 1; “Utah Colony at Ann Arbor,” Salt Lake Herald, February 3, 1902, 3; “Brigham Young Academy,” Deseret Evening News, May 3, 1902, 21; “Miss Pike Engaged by the Academy,” Deseret Evening News, July 9, 1902, 7; “Society Events,” Deseret Evening News, January 24, 1903, 7; “Agricultural College,” Salt Lake Herald, May 17, 1903, 26; “Local Jottings,” Logan Republican, June 13, 1903, 8; “Eureka News” Deseret Evening News, August 15, 1903, 15; “Generalities,” Logan Republican, August 31, 1904, 5; “Gets His License but is too busy to Marry,” Los Angeles Herald, September 20, 1905, 12; “Miss Annie Pike Surprises Friends,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 25, 1905, 1; “Cupid Got Her,” Deseret News, September 25, 1905, 2; “In the Social Realm,” Truth (Salt Lake City), April 28, 1906, 4; “Society,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 9, 1906, 5; Annie Pike Greenwood, “A Christmas Prayer” (poem), Evening Telegram (Garden City, Kansas), December 25, 1906, 2; “Society,” Salt Lake Herald, December 29, 1907, 10; “Society,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 16, 1908, 5; “Dots and Dashes,” Evening Telegram (Garden City, Kansas), October 6, 1910; “Takes up farm life and finds happiness,” Utah Farmer, February 26, 1916, 10; “The Banners of What?” Goodwin’s Weekly, July 6, 1918, 12; “Dots and Dashes,” Evening Telegram, (Garden City, Kansas), December 13, 1918; A. E. Winship,“Writers Who Are A Present Delight,” Journal of Education, October 16, 1919, 375; “Former student is given welcome,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 1919, 5; Idaho Statesman, August 26, 1924, 5; “KSL,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 6, 1929, 7; “S. L. Woman Enters State Senaate [sic] Race,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 4, 1938, 12; “Mrs. Annie Pike Greenwood,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 11, 1938; “Annie Pike Greenwood is Busy on Utah History,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 19, 1947, 2C, 6C; “Obituaries,” Ogden Standard Examiner, Feb 24, 1956; “Annie Pike Greenwood,” Daily Herald (Provo, Utah), February 24, 1956; Hollis Scott, “Non-Mormon Coed Wrote College Song,” Daily Herald (Provo), July 31,1975, 37; 1880 U. S. Census, Utah County, Utah, population schedule, Provo, enumeration district ED 81, sheet 146D, dwelling 482, family 534, Annie Pike in household of Walter R Pike, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MNSL-463 : accessed 10 August 2017), citing NARA microfilm T9, roll 1338; FHL microfilm 1,255,338; 1900 U. S. Census, Utah County, Utah, population schedule, Provo, enumeration district (ED) 163, sheet 3A, dwelling 39, family 43, Annie Pike in household of Walter R Pike, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MMRT-QF4 : accessed 10 August 2017), citing NARA microfilm T623, roll 1687; FHL microfilm 1,241,687; 1910 U. S. Census, Kearney County, Kansas, population schedule, Lakin, enumeration district (ED) 83, sheet 12A, dwelling 250, family 251, Anna P Greenwood in household of Charles O Greenwood, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M2CZ-RW4 : accessed 10 October 2017) citing NARA microfilm T624, roll 441; FHL microfilm 1,374,454; 1920 U. S. Census, Jerome County, Idaho, population schedule Hazelton, ED 186, sheet 4B, line 61, dwelling 82, family 82, Annie Greenwood in household of Charles Greenwood, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDCR-BYJ : accessed 1 August 2017), citing NARA microfilm T625, roll 293; FHL microfilm 1,820,293.

 

Eliza R. Snow (1804-1887)

Eliza R. Snow is recognized today as one of the leading women in the early Mormon Church. In addition to serving as the second president of the Relief Society, she helped organize the children’s Primary Association and the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, but she is perhaps best known as “Zion’s Poetess.” As a poet she employed a wide variety of poetic forms and meters, but it is her hymns for which she is remembered. The vast majority of her poetical works, however, are largely unknown.

Birth records for the town of Becket, Massachusetts list her name at birth as “Roxey Eliza Snow,” but most Snow biographers agree her given name was instead Eliza Roxcy Snow. She was born on January 21, 1804, the second daughter of Oliver Snow and Rosetta L. Pettibone, and two years later the Snow family relocated to Mantua, Ohio, then part of Ohio’s Western Reserve. As a young girl Eliza began writing poetry, often completing her school work in verse. She became a published poet at age twenty-one, when “Pity &c.” was published in the Western Courier in nearby Ravenna. Over the next seven years Snow contributed more than thirty poems, under various pseudonyms, to the Western Courier and the Ohio Star.

Eliza was raised a Baptist, but eventually became affiliated with Alexander Campbell’s restoration movement. In 1831 her mother and older sister Leonora joined Joseph Smith’s newly organized Church of Christ, and Eliza was eventually baptized into his church four years later. It has been suggested that she gave up a promising literary career for her new religion. “The prospect of a successful and perhaps brilliant literary career she sacrificed upon the altar of her religious convictions,” wrote Mormon poet Orson Whitney in 1904. Many of her writings after joining the Mormon church were didactic in nature, used to cheer or admonish the saints, or written for funerals or other such events.

In December 1835 Eliza moved to Kirtland, Ohio to be with the saints, where she taught a select school for girls. Her family relocated to Kirtland in early 1837. Persecution against the saints was very intense during this period, and many members of the church fled. The Snow family left Kirtland in the spring of 1838, and settled in Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri. This was short-lived, however, for on October 27, 1838 Governor Boggs signed his infamous “extermination order” calling for the extermination or expulsion of all Mormons from the state of Missouri. The Snow family was forced to flee to Far West, Missouri, where they stayed the following winter. In the spring of 1839, Eliza briefly sojourned in Quincy, Illinois, while her father and mother moved farther north, eventually settling in Walnut Grove.

While in Quincy Eliza contributed poems to the local newspaper, the Quincy Whig, and these soon began to attract attention. The editor of the Quincy Whig noted:

“Several of the late numbers of the Quincy Whig contain the poetical effusions of a new candidate for fame, Miss Eliza K. Snow, a Mormon. We learn verbally, that her productions are exciting much attention.
“We have seen but few of them, yet those few give evidence of genius and taste.” (June 8, 1839)

Her fame began to spread far outside of Quincy, and shortly afterward in the New Orleans Daily Picayune was published the following:

“A Mormon female, at Quincy, Ill., is said to have produced some beautiful poetry. Her name is Eliza K. Snow, and some of her minor pieces are said to be perfect gems.” (July 4, 1839)

From Quincy, Eliza resided temporarily in Morley Settlement, near Lima, Illinois with her sister Leonora, before leaving for Commerce (later Nauvoo) on July 16, 1839. In later years, Eliza would describe the years in Nauvoo in glowing terms. “To narrate what transpired within the seven years in which we built and occupied Nauvoo, the beautiful, would fill many volumes,” she wrote. “That is a history that never will, and never can, repeat itself. Some of the most important events of my life transpired in that brief term.” (Tullidge, 294). These events included being called as secretary to the Relief Society (organized on March 17, 1842), her plural marriage to the prophet, Joseph Smith, on June 29, 1842, and his eventual martyrdom on June 27, 1844.

After the death of Joseph Smith, and the succession of Brigham Young as prophet, the decision was made for the saints to relocate further west, to the Rocky Mountains, to escape additional persecution. Eliza was among the second pioneer company to leave Nauvoo, and they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 2, 1847. She married Brigham Young two years later, on June 29, 1849, residing in the Lion House until the time of her death. (Derr and Davidson give the date of this marriage as October 3, 1844)

The Relief Society was reorganized in the Salt Lake Valley on December 18, 1867, and Eliza was called to serve as its President, a calling she would hold for the remainder of her life. Her other accomplishments include helping to organize the children’s Primary Association and the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, and establishing the Women’s Exponent, a semi-monthly newspaper which ran from 1872-1914. She also served as president of the board of directors of the Deseret Hospital Association which was responsible for building Deseret Hospital.

In 1872 she began a nine months journey to Jerusalem, with President George Albert Smith, Lorenzo Snow and Paul A. Schettler, where the Mount of Olives was dedicated in preparation for the return of the Jews.

Snow published a volume of her poetry in Liverpool, England in 1856. A second volume was published in 1877 in Salt Lake City. Her other published works include Bible Questions and Answers for Children (1883), Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow (1884), and Hymns and Songs (1880), a hymn book compiled for the Primary Association.

Eliza Roxcy Snow died on December 5, 1887, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was buried in the Brigham Young Cemetery.

Nine of Snow’s hymns are included in the current Latter-day Saint hymnal. (She is credited in the hymnal with a tenth hymn, “Truth Reflects Upon Our Senses,” which she did not write.) The definitive collection of Snow’s poems, Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry, was published in 2009 by Jill Mulvay Derr and Karen Lynn Davidson. It is a beautiful collection, well-researched, and includes thorough, well-written introductions to each poem. My only complaint with this collection is that for inexplicable reasons some of the newspapers to which Snow was known to have contributed, including the Mountaineer and the Salt Lake Telegraph, were not searched, and therefore several of the poems in the collection list incorrect first publication dates and sources of publication. The book is out of print, but a kindle edition is still available at amazon.com.

Eloquence

There is an eloquence that breathes thro’out
The world inanimate. There is a tone,
A silent tone of speech that meets the soul
And whispers things pathetic, soft and sweet;
Like the enchantments of the night which move
On slumber’s downy chariot wheels, and dress
In playfulness of mirth, the hours of rest.
…………….That sun which rolls in glittering splendor o’er,
And with a lucid smile creates our day—
Yon clouds that float in fleecy sheets across
The pale blue canopy, or else condens’d
Appear in massy form and feature dark—
The placid moon, and those nocturnal orbs,
And all the vast variety that meets the eye
Impart a meaning to the thinking soul,
But what’s the little insect’s buzz, and what
The rustling of a straw, to the sweet notes
Which flow harmonious from the harpsichord?
And what is silent nature’s eloquence
To the imperial eloquence of words
Whose pathos is intelligence? Flowing
From lips by wisdom’s touch inspir’d, it charms—
It captures e’en a Thoeian’s soul. ‘Tis far,
Before the harmony of David’s harp
That charm’d to peace the evil haunted Saul.
Brown melancholy, sober pensiveness
And all such evil spirits lose their grasp
And fly like mists before the morning sun,
When language with instruction nicely fraught,
And with amusements mingled colours ting’d,
Moving in lofty strains of eloquence,
Turns on the hearing organs round the head
And falls in cadence on a feeling heart.
…………….There is a charm in music—I have felt
The magic of its strokes, and had my soul
Dissolv’d and run like liquid streamlets down;
But ‘tis too much like giving up the ghost,
This passive playfulness of soul that yields
To the vague witch’ry of unmeaning sounds,
‘Tis but the sov’reign power of speech can break
Inertia’s pond’rous chain, and give us all
Creation’s wide extent to range. What else
Will draw the stubborn spirit from the throne
Of idol self, and bend to others’ weal?
…………….Far back in olden times, when Moses led
From Egypt’s soil the captive chosen tribes
Had eloquence high saintly honors gain’d.
Moses was “slow of speech” but Aaron plied
This potent model of the human mind,
Impressing truths both nat’ural and reveal’d.
…………….Look at those nations that have not receiv’d
A fine soft polish from its pencil strokes;
Their tale if told will grate on mem’ry’s ear
Like the last ling’ring of a doleful knell!
Those ancients that in Europe’s southern clime
Like constellations shone amid the gloom
Of their nocturnal day, prov’d well the pow’r
The all transforming pow’r of eloquence—
A pow’r to turn the mind in virtue’s mould,
And give an impress not before its own.
…………….But what can paint the beauties or can tell
The force of eloquence, but eloquence?
And who that never on its purling stream
Was borne, or soar’d upon its plumy wing,
Could see, could know, although itself should paint
In colours brilliant as the noonday beam,
By words that move in easy flowing strains
As ever Cicero spoke or Thales sung?

Western Courier, June 19, 1829. An altered version of this poem was published in the Mountaineer on March 2, 1861. This version was reprinted in Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (1877)

The Year Has Departed

List to that sound—that rolling chime:
Hark! ‘tis the busy knell of Time:
…………The year has gone,
…………And borne along,
…………The hopes and fears—
…………The smiles and tears
Of multitudes, unknown to song.

The year has gone, and in its train,
Such scenes of pleasure and of pain,
…………As bear us on
…………From life’s first dawn,
…………Thro’ flowing deeps—
…………O’er rugged steeps,
Until life’s glimmering lamp is gone.

The year has gone—but mem’ry still,
The curtain holds with fairy skill:
…………As if to keep
…………Old Time asleep,
…………While scenes roll back
…………Upon their track,
Till recollection takes a peep.

The year has gone—but yet, a trace,
Which Time’s broad duster can’t erase,
…………Is left behind
…………To throng the mind,
…………With deeds perform’d,
…………And prospects warm’d,
Deeply with the future years entwin’d.

The year has gone, and with it fled
The schemes of many an aching head;
…………Those half-formed schemes,
…………Like fairy dreams,
…………Which take their flight
…………Before the light,
Or perish is the noon-day beams.

The year has fled—and with it, flown
The sage’s thought—the songster’s tone—
…………Gone to pervade
…………Oblivion’s shade:
…………And with them dies,
…………No more to rise,
The product of the Poet’s head.

Warren Co., Ill. Jan. 1, 1840.

Published as “The Year Has Gone” in Poems, Religious, Historical and Poetical (1877), this poem is included with the above title in Snow’s journal held by the Church History Library at Salt Lake City. In this journal she indicates this poem was originally published in the Quincy Whig, but it cannot be found in that newspaper. However, at least four dates from of the Quincy Whig cannot at present be located, so this is possible. Another possibility is that she was misremembering the newspaper: a few of her poems originally published in the Ohio Star were listed in this journal as being from the Western Courier. In Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry, Derr and Davidson included the published version from Snow’s Poems.

Imagination

…………..This pow’r of omnipotent kind,
…………..No prowess can fathom or trace;
Borne on by contingence it moves unconfin’d,
…………..Thro’ the regions of matter and space.

…………..Like a swift pinion’d courser of light,
…………..On the wings of the morning it flies;
It puts forth its wand o’er the darkness of night,
…………..And future-clad phantoms arise.

…………..‘Tis creative, and winter in vain,
…………..May scatter the breath of the north,
Its music resuscitates nature again,
…………..And flora’s gay nations call forth.

…………..It boasts of a vision intense,
…………..That looks through the chambers of death;
It opens the treasures of knowledge and sense,
…………..And eloquence feeds on its breath.

…………..Its smiles, all the blossoms of May—
…………..Its frown, like the slanderer’s tongue—
E’en silence is vocal and solitude gay,
…………..When it utters its voice in the song.

Western Courier, February 7, 1829.

My First View of a Western Prairie

…………….The loveliness of Nature always did
Delight me.
…………………….In the days of childhood, when
My young light heart, in all the buoyancy
Of its own bright imagination’s spell,
Beat in accordant consonance to all
For which it cherished an affinity;
The summer glory of the landscape rous’d
Within my breast a princely feeling. Time’s
Obliterating glance cannot erase
The impulse with my being interwove;
And oftentimes, in the fond ecstasy
Of youth’s effervescence, I’ve gaz’d
Upon the richly variegated fields,
Which most emphatically spoke the praise
Of Nature, and the cultivator’s skill.

…………….But when I heard the western traveler paint
The splendid beauties of the far-off West,
Where Nature’s pastures, rich and amply broad,
Waving in full abundance, seem to mock
The deepest schemes and boldest efforts of
The cultivators of the eastern soil;
I grew incredulous that Nature’s dress
Should be so rich, and so domestic, and
So beautiful, without a touch of Art;
And thought the picture fancifully wrought.

…………….Yet, in the process of reviving scenes,
I left the place of childhood and of youth;
And as I journey’d t’ward the setting sun,
As if awaking from a nightly dream,
Into a scenery grand and strangely new,
I almost thought myself transported back
Upon the retrograding wheel of time;
To days, and scenes, when Greece presided o’er
The destinies of earth; and when she shone
Like her ador’d Apollo, without one
Tall rival in the field of Literature;
And fancied then, that I was standing on
That tow’ring mount of truly classic fame,
That overlooks the rich, the fertile, and
The far-extended vales of Crissa: Or,
That in some wild poetic spell, of deep
Unconscious recklessness, I’d stray’d afar
Upon the flowering plains of Marathon.

…………….But soon reflection’s potent wand dispel’d
The false illusion, and I realiz’d
That I was not inhaling foreign air;
Nor moving in a scene emblazon’d with
The classic legends of antiquity;
O no; the scenery around was not
Enchantment: ‘Twas the bright original,
Of those fair images and ideal forms,
Which fancy’s pencil is so prompt to sketch,
Instead of treading on Ionian fields;
I stood upon Columbian soil; and in
The rich and fertile State of Illinois.
Amaz’d, I view’d until my optic nerve
Grew dull and giddy with the frenzy of
The innocent delight; and I exclaim’d
With Sheba’s queen, “One half had not been told.”

…………….But then my thoughts—can I describe them now?
No; for description’s ablest pow’rs grow lame,
Whenever put upon the chase of things
Of non-existence; and my thoughts had all,
Like liquid matter, melted down; and had
Become, as with a secret touch absorb’d,
In the one all-engrossing feeling of
Deep admiration, vivid and intense.
And my imagination too, for once,
Acknowledged its own imbecility,
And cower’d down, as if to hide away:
For all its pow’rs had been too cold and dull,
Too tame, and too domestic far, to draw
A parallel, with the bold grandeur, and
The native beauty of this “Western World.”

Quincy Whig, June 29, 1839. Republished in Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (1856)

To Mrs. Haywood

Like the figures incog., in a masquerade scene,
Are some spirits now dwelling on earth;
And we judge of them only by actions and mien,
Unappriz’d of all relative worth.

In the transforming mask of mortality clad,
Kings and princes and peasants appear;
All forgetting whatever acquaintance they had
In existence preceding this here.

When the past shall develop, the future unfold,
When the present its sequel shall tell—
When unmask’d we shall know, be beheld, and behold;
O how blest, if incog. we’ve done well.

Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (1856)

Human Life—What Is It?

I’ve seen the shadow passing by,
…………….When pass’d its being time was o’er—
I’ve seen the pointed arrow fly,
……………………….‘Twas found no more.

I’ve seen the lightning cut the air,
…………….One vivid blaze, and all was gone—
I’ve seen the meteor’s transient glare
……………………….Pass quickly on.

I’ve seen the tender, lovely flower
…………….Dismantled of its modest hue—
I’ve seen the pine majestic, tower
……………………….And perish too.

I’ve seen the parting of the wave,
…………….‘Twas parted and no trace remain’d—
I’ve sung the requiem of the brave—
……………………….‘Twas all he gain’d.

I’ve seen the pride of life decay,
…………….And destin’d to an early grave—
I’ve seen the aged fade away,
……………………….And none could save,

Just such is life, ‘tis but a dream,
…………….And all its scenes a trifling jest!
There’s nought but Fancy’s childish gleam
……………………….To be possess’d.

But lo! a shining Seraph comes!
…………….Hark! ‘tis the voice of sacred Truth;
He smiles, and on his visage blooms,
……………………….Eternal youth.

He speaks of things before untold,
…………….Reveals what men nor angels knew,
The secret pages now unfold
……………………….To human view.

Now other scenes in prospect rise,
…………….Than those which darken passing by
Immortal triumphs—social joys
……………………….That never die.

Death’s favored captives burst in twain,
…………….Their bond of union with the urn;
The lamp of life reviv’d again
……………………….Will ever burn.

Western Courier, February 14, 1829

Song of the Desert

Beneath the cloud-topp’d mountain,
….Beside the craggy bluff,
Where every dint of nature
….Is rude and wild enough;
Upon the verdant meadow,
….Upon the sunburnt plain,
Upon the sandy hillock;
….We waken music’s strain.

Beneath the pine’s thick branches
….That has for ages stood;
Beneath the humble cedar,
….And the green cotton-wood;
Beside the broad, smooth river,
….Beside the flowing spring,
Beside the limpid streamlet;
….We often sit and sing.

Beneath the sparkling concave,
….When stars in millions come
To cheer the pilgrim strangers,
….And bid us be at home;
Beneath the lovely moonlight,
….When Cynthia spreads her rays;
In social groups we assembled,
….We join in songs of praise.

Cheer’d by the blaze of firelight,
….When twilight shadows fall,
And when the darkness gathers
….Around our spacious hall,
With all the warm emotion
….To saintly bosoms given,
In strains of pure devotion
….We praise the God of heaven.

Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (1856). This poem recorded in Snow’s journal on August 26, 1847.

A Winter Soliloquy

I hear—I see its tread as Winter comes—
Clad in white robes, how terribly august!
Its voice spreads terror—ev’ry step is mark’d
With devastation! Nature in affright,
Languid and lifeless, sinks before the blast.

Should nature mourn? No: gentle Spring, ere long,
Will reascend the desolated throne:
Her animating voice will rouse from death,
Emerging from its chains, more beauteous far,
The world of variegated Nature.

Not so with man—Rais’d from the lowly dust,
He blooms awhile; but when he fades, he sets
To rise no more—on earth no more to bloom!
Swift is his course and sudden his decline!
Behold, to-day, his pulse beat high with hope—
His arms extended for the eager grasp
Of pleasure’s phantom, fancy’s golden ken
Paints in a gilded image on his heart.
Behold, to-morrow where? Ah! who can tell?
Ye slumb’ring tenants, will not you reply?
No: from his bow, death has a quiver sent,
And seal’d your senses in a torpid sleep.
Then who can tell? The living know him not:
Altho’ perhaps, a friend or two, may drop
A tear, and say he’s gone—she is no more!

Hark! from on high a glorious sound is heard,
Rife with rich music in eternal strains.
The op’ning heavens, by revelation’s voice
Proclaim the key of knowledge unto man.

A Savior comes—He breaks the icy chain;
And man, resuscitated from the grave,
Awakes to life and immortality,
To be himself—more perfectly himself,
Than e’er he bloom’d in the primeval state
Of his existence in this wintry world.

Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (1877)

Biographical sources:
Jill Mulvay Derr and Karen Lynn Davidson, Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry (Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 2009); Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom (New York, 1877); Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow (Salt Lake City: Unversity of Utah Press, 1995); Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, “Eliza R. Snow,” in Vicky Burgess-Olson, ed., Sister Saints (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), 3-19; Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah vol. 4 (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons Co., 1904), 573-576; “Vital Records of Becket, MA, to the end of the year 1849,”
http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Berkshire/Becket/Images/Becket_B031.shtml
accessed November 17, 2017. Births: Snow, Roxey Eliza, d. Oliver and Rosetta L., Jan. 21, 1804.