Sam Walter Foss - Minor Poet with a Major Message

Sam Walter Foss is a late 19th century poet with a major Christian message for the 21st century. Certainly part of it is optimism. But self-deprecating humor is also part of his optimistic bent. Many of his poems are straight-forward and easily read but taken as a collection they bear a contemporary message with an overall spirit of hardiness against dark times. For Sam, he observed the affects of the Civil War 30 years hence, and later, the loss of his son to WW1. He is the everyman poet for the common man or woman. - res

 

 

 

                   

 

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Sam Walter Foss:
Minor Poet with a Major Message

Platform talk by John Hoad, Leader Emeritus

of the Ethical Society of St. Louis

http://ethicalstl.org/platforms/platform071199.php

 

Delivered on July 11, 1999

Let me introduce you to a very special person -- a very special poet. Let me introduce you to Sam Walter Foss. He was born June 19, 1858, and he died February 26, 1911, at age 52. Most of his collections of verse were published in the 1890's. So Foss was in a situation similar to ours, in the transition from one century to another. We think of our century as a time of massive wars and of technological creation. We face the new century hoping we can do better next time around.

 

But the nineteenth century was also a time of wars around the globe and especially of the American Civil War, which took the lives of tens of thousands of American men. One of Foss's books was entitled Songs of war and Peace, published in 1899. However, he too urged the theme of optimism. The last newspaper column he wrote, while in hospital awaiting an operation that would fail to save his life, was on "Optimism." A boisterous faith in humanity characterized his poetry, even though he had a sharp eye for human foibles and failings.

 

The first Foss poem I met was a poem read at the memorial of Clayton Chism, who was a member here at the Ethical Society. It was his favorite and is the poem by Foss most frequently included in anthologies of poetry. You can find it in One Hundred and One Famous Poems, edited by Roy Cook. It is called, "The House by the Side of the Road." This is how it goes:

 

THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

He was a friend to man, and he lived
In a house by the side of the road -- Homer
There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran --
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by --
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban --
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road,
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife.
But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan --
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road --
It's here the race of men go by.
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish -- so am I;
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Why do I speak of Foss as a minor poet? Judging poetry can be very subjective, but there is clear evidence that the literary experts are not taken with Foss. I searched my own collection of reference works. There was no "Foss" in:

• Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
• Cambridge Biographical Dictionary
• Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia
• Foerster's American Poetry and Prose
• Standard Book of British and American Verse
• Oxford Book of American Verse
• Louis Untermeyer doesn't include him in Modern American Poetry
• and he's definitely not in the Mentor Book of Major American Poets

With the help of a librarian, Mary Johnson (a friend of mine in Alton), I did find him in two places: American Authors 1600-1900 rather patronizingly calls him a "verse writer," but the Dictionary of American Biography honors him as "poet, journalist, humorist, and librarian."

 

Foss was a country boy from New Hampshire, worked on his father's farm, went to school in the winter, lost his mother at age four, graduated from Brown University in 1882, then got into writing as publisher, editor, and journalist. He was the librarian of the Somerville Public Library in Massachusetts from 1898 till his death in 1911. He married a minister's daughter and they had a daughter and a son. The son died in World Was I on the fields of France. He attended College Avenue Methodist Church in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is a church still in existence and active.

 

Methodist though he was, he could have been versifying Ethical Culture philosophy. This is Foss's idea of "The True Bible."
 

THE TRUE BIBLE

What is the world's true Bible -- ‘tis the highest thought of man,
The thought distilled through ages since the dawn of thought began.
And each age adds a word thereto, some psalm or promise sweet --
And the canon is unfinished and forever incomplete.
O'er the chapters that are written, long and lovingly we pore --
But the best is yet unwritten, for we grow from more to more.

Let us heed the voice within us and its messages rehearse;
Let us build the growing Bible -- for we too must write a verse.
What is the purport of the scheme toward which all time is gone?
What is the great aeonian goal? The joy of going on.

And are there any souls so strong, such feet with swiftness shod,
That they shall reach it, reach some bourne, the ultimate of god?
There is no bourne, no ultimate. The very farthest star
But rims a sea of other stars that stretches just as far.
There's no beginning and no end: As in the ages gone,
The greatest joy of joys shall be -- the joy of going on.


He liked to poke fun at sanctimonious ritual, and here is one of his humorous verses, called "An Informal Prayer," or "The Prayer of Cyrus Brown." Throughout the poem he quotes from different religious characters.

AN INFORMAL PRAYER -- THE PRAYER OF CYRUS BROWN

"The proper way for a man to pray"
said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
"and the only proper attitude
is down upon his knees."

"Nay, I should say the way to pray,"
said Reverend Dr. Wise
"is standing straight with outstrecthed arms
and rapt and upturned eyes."

"Oh, no, no, no." said Elder Snow
"Such posture is too proud
A man should pray with eyes fast closed
and head contritely bowed."

"It seems to me his hands should be
astutely clasped in front.
With both thumbs a pointing toward the ground."
Said Reverend Hunt.

"Las' year I fell in Hodgkins well
head first," said Cyrus Brown,
"With both my heels a-stikin' up,
my head a-p'inting down,
An' I made a prayer right there an' then;
Best prayer I ever said;
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed,
A-standin on my head."

 

And Foss noted the anger that religious debate can bring out. This is a poem called "Odium Theologicum," which is a familiar word for the hatred produced by theology.

ODIUM THEOLOGICUM

I

They met and they talked where the crossroads meet,
Four men from the four winds come,
And they talked of the horse, for they loved the theme,
And never a man was dumb.
The man from the North loved the strength of the horse,
And the man from the East his pace,
And the man from the South loved the speed of the horse,
And the man from the West his grace.

So these four men from the four winds come,
Each paused a space in his course
And smiled in the face of his fellow man
And lovingly talked of the horse.
Then each man parted and went his way
As their different courses ran;
And each man journeyed with peace in his heart
And loving his fellow man.

II

They met the next year where the crossroads meet,
Four men from the four winds come:
And it chanced as they met that they talked of God,
And never a man was dumb.
One imagined God in the shape of a man.
A spirit did one insist.
One said that nature itself was God.
One said that he didn't exist.

They lashed each other with tongues that stung,
That smote as with a rod;
Each glared in the face of his fellow man,
And wrathfully talked of God.
Then each man parted and went his way,
As their different courses ran;
And each man journeyed with wrath in his heart,
And hating his fellow man.

 

The title of his last book of poems, published in 1907, and republished in 1911, with eight additional poems, expresses what Foss was all about. He called it, Songs of the Average Man. (Remember he's speaking long before the feminist revolution, so when he says "man," he does intend "man and woman." And also, as poets know, "man" is a much easier word to rhyme with than "human".) But for Foss an "average man" was an extraordinary person, for each of us, in his view, is special.

 

Here is his poem, "The Man From The Crowd."
 

THE MAN FROM THE CROWD

Men seem as alike as the leaves on the trees,
As alike as the bees in a swarming of bees;
And we look at the millions that make up the state
All equally little and equally great,
And the pride of our courage is cowed.
Then Fate calls for a man who is larger than men --
There's a surge in the crowd -- there's a movement -- and then
There arises a man that is larger than men --
And the man comes up from the crowd.

The chasers of trifles run hither and yon,
And the little small days of small things go on,
And the world seems no better at sunset than dawn,
And the race still increases its plentiful spawn.
And the voice of our wailing is loud.
Then the Great Deed calls out for the Great Men to come,
And the Crowd, unbelieving, sits sullen and dumb --
But the Great Deed is done, for the Great Man is come --
Aye, the man comes up from the crowd.

There's a dead hum of voices, all say the same thing,
And our forefathers' songs are the songs that we sing,
And the deeds by our fathers and grandfathers done
Are done by the son of the son of the son,
And our heads in contrition are bowed.
Lo, a call for a man who shall make all things new
Goes down through the throng! See! he rises in view!
Make room for the men who shall make all things new! --
For the man who comes up from the crowd.

And where is the man who comes up from the throng
Who does the new deed and who sings the new song,
And makes the old world as a world that is new?
And who is the man? It is you! It is you!
And our praise is exultant and proud.
We are waiting for you there -- for you are the man!
Come up from the jostle as soon as you can;
Come up from the crowd there, for you are the man --
The man who comes up from the crowd.

 

From some lines in that poem, we see that Foss didn't like the dead hand of the past to hold the present to ransom. The other most quoted poem by Foss, after "The House by the Side of the Road," is a humorous satire that bears on that theme of letting precedent overrule the present. (It is a poem that has recently seen revival among motivational speakers.)

 

It's called "The Calf-Path" and this is how it goes.
 

THE CALF-PATH

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then two hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made;
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ‘twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed -- do not laugh --
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach --
But I am not ordained to preach.

 

Foss's works are unfortunately all out of print. But somebody put me on to Barnes and Noble website on the Internet. You pick "out of print" and you bring up Sam Walter Foss. Through that source I have gradually collected all his five volumes of poems, all neatly bound and from the 1890's and this last one from the first decade of this century.

 

I could keep you here an hour or two sharing Foss's delightful characterizations and caricatures of people. He tells of the young woman who discoursed endlessly and in scholarly fashion about philosophers while doing crochet. Her lover can't get a word in and eventually goes out and shoots himself. The poem ends: "Unshocked / She talked and talked and talked and talked."

 

He pictures an old blind man who fiddles and sings, and people form a ring around him and there is "laughter choked with teardrops" for the listeners know that "every life's a blind man's tune that's played on broken strings."

 

He tells of a little girl talking with his father and she says, "Daddy, did God make me?"

 

"Yes, of course," Daddy says, "God made you."

 

And then she looks up at her rather plain haggard old father and says, "And Daddy, did God make you?"

 

"Oh yes," says the father, "God made everybody."

 

So then the little girl looks in the mirror and sees how pretty she looks and she looks up at rather plain Daddy and says, "Daddy, I think God is improving at his trade."

 

He was hard on his own profession of journalism for its muck-raking: "Run we through our printing press / Myriad miles of nastiness," he wrote in a poem called, "The New Journalism." But in the poem "The Press," he saw the importance of the newspaper that (as he put it) "writes our history while we are waiting."
 

 

Conclusion

 

I'll close with two poems. One, called "The Coming Century," shows Foss's remarkable imagination, as he sees us drawing energy from the core of the earth (where volcanoes get theirs) and power from the wind (we've done a bit of that), building with solidified air (I'm not sure we know how to do that), and flying back and forth over the Atlantic. Remember as you hear this, that he was writing within a few years of the Wright Brothers' first lift-off in flight, when many other distinguished people were saying that there was no future in air travel. He also had a faith in psychic energy, that we haven't been able to tap yet.

This is how "The Coming Century" goes:
 

THE COMING CENTURY

If the century gone, as the wise ones attest,
Exceeds all the centuries before it,
Then the century coming will better its best
And tower immeasurably o'er it.
And, if miracles now are coming to pass
Right here in your and my time,
Why, miracles then will be thicker than grass
And as common as flies are in fly time.

We will send down our pipes to the Earth's burning core
Where the smithy of Vulcan is quaking,
And the fires that make the volcanoes outpour
We will use for our johnny-cake baking.
And then we will bridle and harness the tide
And make the pulse beat of the ocean
Provide the propulsion when Baby shall ride
And keep his small carriage in motion.

We will hitch the East wind to the crank of our churn
And make us a butter to "brag on";
By projecting a psychical impulse we'll turn
The wheels of a furniture wagon.
We'll make yellow squashes from nice yellow dirt
Scooped up from our pastures and beaches;
On Sahara some chemical compound we'll squirt,
And the sand will evolve into peaches.

And a hundred strong men by concentring their will
Ride straight to one point, like a plummet,
Will turn upside down a respectable hill
And spin it around on its summit.
Our buildings we'll build of solidified air
'Way up from the sill to the skylight,
With trimmings of brownstone surpassingly fair
Of solidified air of the twilight.

We will fly through the air from New York to the Rhine,
Through Germany, Lower and Upper,
Stop off, if we like, in Geneva to dine
And come back to New York for our supper.
If we don't wish to fly we will throw our own thought,
Yes, each throw his thought to his sweetheart,
By a kind of a mental telepathy shot,
A method by which heart can meet heart.

We shall learn of the beings who people the stars
And add to the cosmical mirth, then,
By telling new jokes to the people of Mars
And hear then laugh back on the earth, then.
Ah, many trans-cosmic debates shall be whirled,
And long be the parleys between us;
One end of the dialogues fixed in this world,
And the other located in Venus.

Finally, his poem, "The Trumpets." Foss went into hospital after grappling with some indeterminate illness for two years in the Christmas of 1910, where he wrote his article on "Optimism" and where he wrote his final poem, just before the operation. The operation did not save him and he died on February 26, 1911. So this is his swan song.

 

I have shared Foss with you because, first off, I found him so fascinating myself; secondly I was so concerned that this poet who has so much to say has been so neglected and none of his work reprinted, other than one or two poems in anthologies; and because I believe that the optimism that he shared is an optimism needed during this transition for us. Lionel Tiger, in his book, Optimism, The Biology of Hope, tells us that optimism is a survival mechanism of the human race. You have to have faith -- faith in your future -- personally and nationally.

 

And so I give you Foss and his final poem, "The Trumpets."
 

THE TRUMPETS

[This was Mr. Foss's last poem, and was written just before Christmas, 1910, when he thought he might have to submit to an operation. The end came February 26, 1911.]
The trumpets were calling me over the hill,
And I was a boy and knew nothing of men;
But they filled all the vale with their clangorous trill,
And flooded the gloom of the glen.

"The trumpets," I cried, "Lo, they call from afar,
They are mingled with music of bugle and drum;
The trumpets, the trumpets are calling to war,
The trumpets are calling -- I come."

The trumpets were calling me over the Range,
And I was a youth and was strong for the strife;
And I was full fain for the new and the strange,
And mad for the tumult of life.

And I heard the loud trumpets that blew for the fray,
In the spell of their magic and madness was dumb;
And I said, "I will follow by night and by day,
The trumpets are calling -- I come."

The trumpets were calling and I was a man,
And had faced the stern world and grown strong;
And the trumpets mere calling far off, and I ran
Toward the blare of their mystical song.

And they led me o'er mountains, ‘neath alien skies,
All else but their music was dumb;
And I ran till I fell, and slept but to rise,
Lo, the trumpets are calling -- I come.

The trumpets are calling, I've come to the sea,
But far out in the moon-lighted glow,
I still hear the trumpets, they're calling to me,
The trumpets are calling -- I go.

And lo, a strange boatman is here with his bark,
And he takes me and rows away, silent and dumb;
But my trumpets! my trumpets! they peal through the dark,
The trumpets are calling -- I come.

 

R.E. Slater - Rebirth (a poem)

 

Rebirth

by R.E. Slater

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Photo Credit: Song Bird Art



( For context to poem see link )

Richard Wilbur - Two Voices in a Meadow (Milkweed, Stone)

Two Voices in a Meadow by Richard Wilbur

1. A MILKWEED
 

Anonymous as cherubs

Over the crib of God,

White seeds are floating

Out of my burst pod.

What power had I

Before I learned to yield?

Shatter me, great wind:

I shall possess the field.

 

 

 

2. A STONE

 

As casual as cow-dung

Under the crib of God,

I lie where chance would have me,

Up to the ears in sod.

Why should I move? To move

Befits a light desire.

The sill of Heaven would founder,

Did such as I aspire.

 

- Richard Wilber

 

 

 

About the Author

 

Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989.

 

Biography & Additional Poems - http://www.poemhunter.com/richard-wilbur/biography/ 

 

 

 

Review: "Hermeneutics exercise"

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2012/11/16/hermeneutics-exercise/

 

by Peter J. Leithart

Friday, November 16, 2012, 12:49 PM

 

Richard Wilbur’s “A Milkweed” has been haunting me all week. It’s a useful exercise in interpretation: Short, accessible, memorable, and profound. What is the poem “about”?

 

As meta-poetry: The poem is about the poem and the power of poetry. The great wind is also the spirit of poetic inspiration, by which Wilbur bursts open the milkweed so that the seeds posses the field of my mind – if I yield. From here on out, every time I see milkweed, it’ll burst out anew.

 

[But at another level I think its about] a plant in a field, whose seed pod is burst so that the plant reproduces. From the first line, though, we have hints of something bigger. It’s a manger scene, God in his crib with cherubs hovering over. Does Wilbur know that there are cherubs over the ark of the covenant? Even if he doesn’t, the milkweed takes us immediately beyond itself to the event that for Christians marks the center of history – the Word of God made baby flesh.

 

Why anonymous? This seems to anticipate the end of the poem, where the milkweed possesses the field. The silent seeds float away, they seem not to make a name for themselves. Yet they triumph.

 

But what is like cherubs over the crib of God? Grammatically, the answer is the “white seeds.” A troop of milkweed seeds moves through the air like angel hosts. It’s an arresting image, but it’s more than imagery. Watching milkweed seeds in the air, we are like the shepherds to whom myriads of angels sing to announce the coming of God in swaddling clothes. In Wilbur’s imagination, the milkweed bursts out to become more than a milkweed. Perhaps it’s only a bit too grand to call it a cosmology.

 

Can we push the analogy: If the white seeds are the anonymous cherubs, is the broken pod the crib of God? Is there a hint of the later story of the cribbed God, a touch almost too light to be felt concerning the later breaking of the pod of flesh to release a host of seeds? Is the crib of God a seed in the ground that dies to make much fruit? Or is the pod the earthy flesh in which God comes?

 

The milkweed speaks – or is it the poet? Does it matter? Who or whatever he is, the speaker of the second stanza reflects on the power of yielding, which appears to be nearly the only power available. Yielding has to be learned. It does not come naturally; it is nurture not nature to yield. The pod wants to stand firm, protect its vulnerable seeds, resist the great wind. Yielding seems to be a renunciation of power. But the speaker suggests the opposite, and we again, it seems, see the passing shadow of a cross.

 

If you yield, you get shattered. But Wilbur, channeling Donne (“Batter my heart”), invites the shattering. Only the shattering will release the cherub host. Only by being shattered will the milkweed reproduce. It’s the great wind that shatters: Does Wilbur know the etymologies of wind and spirit in Greek, Hebrew, and other languages? I think we can safely assume so. The great wind is the Great Spirit, a Spirit of shattering, to which everything must yield, or be destroyed.

 

And those that do yield possess the field. That is, fill the field: Milkweed is, after all, a weed, and weeds are notoriously fecund. But “possess” is also “own,” and with “the field,” possess is also “win.” There has been no hint of battle (or perhaps a slight hint in “power”), but there is a victory. Anonymous cherub seeds, released by the wind from the pod-crib, form a triumphant army.

 

So: A “cosmology”; also an “eschatology” and a “theory” of poetry. All in eight simple lines. It’s nearly miraculous.

 

 

 

Trumbull Stickney - "Mnemosyne" (poem)

Mnemosyne

It's autumn in the country I remember.
How warm a wind blew here about the ways!

And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber

During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.

 

It's cold abroad the country I remember.

 

The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain

At midday with a wing aslant and limber;

And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.

 

It 's empty down the country I remember.

 

I had a sister lovely in my sight:

Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre;

We sang together in the woods at night.

 

It's lonely in the country I remember.

 

The babble of our children fills my ears,

And on our hearth I stare the perished ember

To flames that show all starry thro' my tears.

 

It's dark about the country I remember.

 

There are the mountains where I lived. The path

Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber,

The stumps are twisted by the tempests' wrath.

 

But that I knew these places are my own,

I'd ask how came such wretchedness to cumber

The earth, and I to people it alone.

 

It rains across the country I remember.


- Trumbull Stickney, 1874-1904


 

Trumbull Stickney - "Song" (poem)

Song

A bud has burst on the upper bough

(The linnet sang in my heart today);

I know where the pale green grasses show

By a tiny runnel, off the way,

And the earth is wet.

(A cuckoo said in my brain: “Not yet.”)

 

I nabbed the fly in a briar rose

(The linnet to-day in my heart did sing);

Last night, my head tucked under my wing,

I dreamed of a green moon-moth that glows

Thro’ ferns of June.

(A cuckoo said in my brain: “So soon?”)

 

Good-bye, for the pretty leaves are down

(The linnet sang in my heart today);

The last gold bit of upland’s mown,

And most of summer has blown away

Thro’ the garden gate.

(A cuckoo said in my brain: “Too late.”)


- Trumbull Stickney, 1874-1904


"Song" Notes

• a linnet is melodious songbird finch
• a runnel is a narrow watercourse
• a gold bit mown is a field of hay

Analysis
by Peter @ Vukutu

http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2008/10/friday-poem-song/

 

Joe Stickney (1874-1904) was a student of George Santayana at Harvard and later friends with him and with Henry Adams in Paris, where Stickney received the first doctorate of letters from the Sorbonne given to an American. Adams wrote of him: ”[in Paris one could] totter about with Joe Stickney, talking Greek philosophy or recent poetry” (The Education, p. 1088) and, “Bay Lodge and Joe Stickney had given birth to the wholly new and original party of Conservative Christian Anarchists, to restore true poetry under the inspiration of the Gotterdammerung.” (The Education, p. 1090).

 

Stickney traveled in Europe and then taught Greek at Harvard, before dying suddenly of a brain tumour. Stickney’s poetry has an elegaic, autumnal feel about it, a sense of loss; it is writing from the end of an era, rather than from the start of one, as is Pounds’ or Eliot’s. Here is “Song“, written in 1902, and very appropriate for the season we in the northern hemisphere are now in.


References

The Complete Poems of Trumbull Stickney -

http://www23.us.archive.org/stream/poemsoftrumbulls00sticuoft/poemsoftrumbulls00sticuoft_djvu.txt

 

Select Poems by Poem Hunter -

http://www.poemhunter.com/trumbull-stickney/poems/page-1/?a=a&l=1&y=

 

A More Complete Listing by Poem Hunter (.pdf) -

http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/trumbull_stickney_2004_9.pdf

 

Select Poems by Poetry Foundation -

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/trumbull-stickney#about

 

 

Biography (from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumbull_Stickney

 

Joseph Trumbull Stickney (June 20, 1874 – October 11, 1904) was an American classical scholar and poet. His style has been characterised^{[by whom?]} as fin de siècle and he is known^{[by whom?]} for his sonnets in particular.

 

He was born in Geneva^[1] and spent much of his early life in Europe. He attended Harvard University from 1891, when he became editor of the Harvard Monthly and a member of Signet society, to 1895, when he graduated magna cum laude. He then studied for seven years in Paris, taking a doctorate at the Sorbonne. He wrote there two dissertations, a Latin one on the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro, and the other on Les Sentences dans la Poésie Grecque. His was the first American docteur ès lettres.

 

He then published a first book of verse Dramatic Verses (1902) and took a position as Instructor in Classics at Harvard (1903), but died in Boston of a brain tumour a year later.^[2] Stickney belongs to the number of Harvard poets (or the Harvard Pessimists) who died young, such as Thomas Parker Sanborn, George Cabot Lodge, Philip Henry Savage and Hugh McCulloch.

Poetic Works

• Dramatic Verses (1902)
• The poems of Trumbull Stickney (1905) edited by George Cabot Lodge; William Vaughn Moody, and John Ellerton Lodge
• Trumbull Stickney (1973) edited by Amberys R. Whittle

 

 

Biography(from the Poetry Foundation)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/trumbull-Stickney

Trumbull Stickney
1874–1904

Trumbull Stickney is best remembered as a promising young poet and scholar who died before his work could fully mature. As William Payne described his poems in a 1906 review for Dial: "Promise rather than fulfillment is the mark of this work as a whole, for it reveals Stickney as still groping for a distinctive manner rather than as having reached a definitive expression of his powers." A brilliant scholar and enthusiastic poet, Stickney died at the age of thirty, just as he was beginning to achieve a unique poetic voice. His friends and admirers have since mined his brief works to find what might have been, but often his poems reveal only the "promise" Payne found in 1906.

Joseph Trumbull Stickney was born in Geneva, Switzerland on June 20, 1874. His parents, Austin and Harriet Trumbull Stickney, were of impressive lineage and impressive schooling: Austin was a classics professor at Trinity College, and Harriet was a descendent of the colonial governor Jonathan Trumbull. Stickney was raised as befitted the child of such learned and lettered kin. He traveled widely, and apart from some brief studies at Walton Lodge and New York's Cutler's school, was taught entirely by his father. After this thorough, cosmopolitan education, Stickney matriculated at Harvard where he bore out the promise invested in him; he was the first freshman to be elected to the editorial board at the Harvard Monthly. Though Stickney published his verses in various college journals, his social circle was centered at the Monthly. There, he met George Cabot Lodge and William Vaughn Moody—two writers who would later edit one of Stickney's posthumous verse collections. Much of Stickney's undergraduate poetry was published in the pages of the Monthly, as well as some criticism of his beloved Greek literature.

Throughout his career, Stickney seems to have felt torn between his academic and literary passions. Nonetheless, after achieving his A.B. (magna cum laude) in 1895, Stickney pursued his studies at the Sorbonne, composing two theses, one a biography of Ermolao Barbaro and one a study of the gnomic elements of Greek poetry. His studies seemed not to nourish him, however; when George Cabot Lodge visited Stickney in 1895-96, he commented that Stickney seemed in "mute not cheerful despair." While in school, Stickney struggled to reconcile his divided interests. While hacking away at the profession he had resigned himself to pursue, he continued to write poetry, notably his long poem "Kalypso" (later published in Dramatic Verses, 1902). Though he planned to publish his work, he felt he was as yet unready, that his work "ha[d] too much thought," according to Michele J. Leggott in the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

His work from this period suggests that he was attempting to rectify that failing. For example, a sonnet written in 1895 called "Cologne Cathedral" shows a shift from the cerebral, antique lines of his early work toward sensual evocations: "Prayer carved the sable flowers; a choral spun / Rose-windows in the aisle; and music stayed / So silken-long by arch and colonnade / That the lines trembled out and followed on[.]" In this passage, Stickney describes the relationship between song and architecture in a fresh way: rather than focusing on the immortality of verse compared to marble monuments, Stickney shows how the visual world can be created by the aural world. "Prayer carved the sable flowers," he writes, suggesting that spiritually infused words can shape the solid world.

Many of Stickney's poems from this period relate to an affair he may have had between 1896 and 1899. (After Stickney's death, his family destroyed all letters relating to unseemly love affairs or requests for funding, so his romantic life will forever be private.) As these lines from poems of that period suggest, however, Stickney became focused on the despair of love: "I heard a dead leaf run. It crossed / My way. For dark I could not see. / It rattled crisp and thin with frost / Out to the lea." By the time the affair ended in 1899, however, Stickney had composed much of his first volume of poetry—but he was unable to find a publisher for it. He wrote despondently to his sister, according to Leggott, "with some resignation I put off the hope of my life. Bay [George Cabot] Lodge publishes a novel and another volume this year." The "hope of [Stickney's] life" did not have to wait long, however: by 1902, he located a publisher for his verses: Charles E. Goodspeed in Boston.

The volume, Dramatic Verses, includes many of Stickney's poems from his Paris days, as well as some work written earlier. In Reference Guide to American Literature, Earl Rovit wrote of this early work that "Stickney's tempered musicality sustains the conventional form structures, raising these poems above the level of similar lamentations that the Mauve Decade manufactured in wholesale lots." One year later, Stickney graduated from the Sorbonne, thus becoming the first American to win the prestigious Doctorat es Lettres there. He took a brief tour of Greece—"a sort of bacchanal," as he described it, according to Leggott—before returning to an academic post at Harvard.

His life as an instructor proved as unfulfilling as his life as a student, however. As quoted by Leggott, he wrote to Henry Adams in 1903: "You refer to the last thing excavated on classic soil, my own torso. It proves not to be an antique at all, but a work of a New England sculptor who was wrecked in a dory off the Peloponnesian Coast. On being presented to Harvard University, it was found the torso had convulsions and couldn't be kept in place. So it is being packed for further travel."

Not only was Stickney unhappy in his work, but he also began to experience terrible headaches as well as periodic "blind spells." He continued to teach and write, but on October 11, 1904 he died of a brain tumor. Like some other poets who have died young, Stickney produced some of his best works in the months leading up to his death. One late fragment, "Sir, say no more," hints tantalizingly at what future was lost when Stickney died: "Sir, say no more. / Within me 'tis as if / The green and climbing eyesight of a cat / Crawled near my mind's poor birds." Like many poets who died young, too, Stickney found his greatest fame after death. His friends Lodge and Moony soon published an edition of his collected poetry, in which critics recognized a "romantic and wistful temper."

Later readers of Stickney's poetry similarly found his work intriguing. Stickney was praised by such notables as Conrad Aiken, William Rose Benet, Louis Untermeyer, Allen Tate, Mark Van Doren, W. H. Auden, Oscar Williams, and John Hollander. Hollander, writing for the New York Times Book Section, suggested that "his work appears more central than ever.... The interest is not in style, but in the grasp of the visionary moment." As a writer for The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English remarked, "Stickney was steeped in Greek thought and literature, yet his poems exhibit a curiously tortured modern sensibility." Indeed, he has become in some ways representative of his period. As Rovit wrote, "he exhibited a cultural impulse that was later followed more extensively by writers like Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot." Stickney's poetry shows glimmers of what it might have become: intellectually intense, given to emotional plunges, rhythmically daring. His few verses offer the raw elements of a finely balanced poetic gift, but those elements are, as Payne noted, "promise rather than fulfillment."

Career

Instructor of Greek at Harvard University, 1903-04. Writer.

Bibliography

• Dramatic Verses, Charles E. Goodspeed (Boston), 1902.
• Les Sentences dans la Poesie Grecque d'Homere a Euripedes, Societe Nouvelle de Librairie et d'Edition (Paris), 1903.
• De Hermolai Barbari vita atque ingenio dissertationem, Societe Nouvelle de Librairie et d'Edition, 1903.
• The Poems of Trumbull Stickney, edited by George Cabot Lodge, William Vaughn Moody, and John Ellerton Lodge, Houghton (Boston), 1905.
• Homage to Trumbull Stickney: Poems, edited by James Reeves and Sean Haldane, Heinemann (London), 1968.
• The Poems of Trumbull Stickney, edited by Amberys R. Whittle, Farrar, Straus (New York City), 1972.

Other

• (Translator with Sylvain Levi) Bhagavad-Gita, Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient (Paris), 1938.

Contributor to Harvard Monthly.

 

Further Reading

 

Books

• Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, HarperCollins, 1991.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 54: American Poets, 1880-1945, Third Series, Gale, 1987.
• Gale, Robert, The Gay Nineties in America, Greenwood Press, 1992.
• Modern American Literature, St. James, 1999.
• The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Oxford University Press, 1995.
• The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Reference Guide to American Literature, St. James, 1994.

Periodicals

• Dial, July 16, 1903.
• New York Times, July 16, 1972, p. 5.

 

R.E. Slater - Autumn Memories (a collection of Haiku-like poems)

Autumn Memories

by R.E. Slater


Green leaves fell hard

One sunny frosted morning

When all was death and quiet.

* * *

A large leafed tree stood proud

Late in the rising autumn sun

Then quickly became undressed.

* * *

The morning quiet was loud

But not as loud as nearby tree

Exploding leaves into the ground.

* * *

By the hundreds the leaves fell

Without air to hold them up

Falling noisily to the ground below.

* * *

One frosted, chilly morning

I stood breathless to watch

The sudden death of autumn.

* * *

When all was peace and wonder

I laid me down in leafy bed

Resting in pillowed content.

* * *

Dead leaves crunched under my step

The woodland did not stop nor care

Nor did I – filled with its brilliance.

* * *

Hunters once were here

And now were gone

And life spread round-and-round.

* * *

Youth was once all I had -

Before the wonders of fall

The improbable beauty of winter.

* * *

Hickory nuts rested in a battered pail

Freshly picked from the cold ground

While grandma chattered in delight.

* * *

Dark shadows crossed the hillocks

Dimming autumn’s lingering lights

Orange moonrise brought all back.

* * *

My chilly breath like a chimney stack

Lifted and rose into the autumn airs

On friendship’s many dappled wings.

* * *

The red tractor’s large black tires

Were muddy and packed tight –

Dad did not care and went to bed.

* * *

We left in early morning’s cold darks

Carrying heavy guns in small hands

Watching wet dogs sniff and run.

* * *

The cotton band uniform held the cold

Wet winter rain pressed against my skin

Brightly stepping to drums and bugles!

* * *

Autumn sunrise met autumn sunset

Orangish yellows blazed dusky reds

Not one day ended as it began.

* * *

Autumn days warm the soul

Autumn evenings clear the head

Decay and rot sweetly fill the air.

* * *

The clasp of cold autumn air

Pulls at my jacket’s warm collar

Lifts my face to its breath.


- R.E. Slater
November 5 & 19, 2012;
March 3, 2014

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

T.S. Eliot - Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat

There's a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail's ready to depart,
Saying "Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can't start."
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster's daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying "Skimble where is Skimble for unless he's very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can't go."
At 11.42 then the signal's nearly due
And the passengers are frantic to a man—
Then Skimble will appear and he'll saunter to the rear:
He's been busy in the luggage van!

He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes
And the signal goes "All Clear!"
And we're off at last for the northern part
Of the Northern Hemisphere!

You may say that by and large it is Skimble who's in charge
Of the Sleeping Car Express.
From the driver and the guards to the bagmen playing cards
He will supervise them all, more or less.
Down the corridor he paces and examines all the faces
Of the travellers in the First and the Third;
He establishes control by a regular patrol
And he'd know at once if anything occurred.
He will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking
And it's certain that he doesn't approve
Of hilarity and riot, so the folk are very quiet
When Skimble is about and on the move.
You can play no pranks with Skimbleshanks!
He's a Cat that cannot be ignored;
So nothing goes wrong on the Northern Mail
When Skimbleshanks is aboard.

Oh, it's very pleasant when you have found your little den
With your name written up on the door.
And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet
And there's not a speck of dust on the floor.
There is every sort of light-you can make it dark or bright;
There's a handle that you turn to make a breeze.
There's a funny little basin you're supposed to wash your face in
And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze.
Then the guard looks in politely and will ask you very brightly
"Do you like your morning tea weak or strong?"
But Skimble's just behind him and was ready to remind him,
For Skimble won't let anything go wrong.
And when you creep into your cosy berth
And pull up the counterpane,
You ought to reflect that it's very nice
To know that you won't be bothered by mice—
You can leave all that to the Railway Cat,
The Cat of the Railway Train!

In the watches of the night he is always fresh and bright;
Every now and then he has a cup of tea
With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he's keeping on the watch,
Only stopping here and there to catch a flea.
You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.
But you saw him at Dumfries, where he speaks to the police
If there's anything they ought to know about:
When you get to Gallowgate there you do not have to wait—
For Skimbleshanks will help you to get out!
He gives you a wave of his long brown tail
Which says: "I'll see you again!
You'll meet without fail on the Midnight Mail
The Cat of the Railway Train."

 

 

 

R.E. Slater - Sea Change (a poem)

Sea Change

by R.E. Slater

It was there. Seen almost immediately in the

greying disappointment pooling in her eyes -

shading a sullen face wrenched in faraway muse.

Seen in the profound sadness wasting away,

leaving me feeling lost and alone. Refusing

chaste solace when dully looking away, guardedly

watching the cold, heavy tides break - entwining

castaway lovers until dawn’s early lights.

A familiar feeling sounding lost souls, plunged

love’s deepest fathoms cast its hastening bights.

Constant as the endless tide’s fey running seas -

ebbing and flowing enchanted shoreline lees.

Adrift true loves that never truly abides -

eternally searching forlorn worlds fled a’flight.

Pierced Venus’ oft scouring shoals, chastened

bright coral’d reefs of valiant dreams dispelled.

Drowned in dark melancholy’s deepest waters -

(whose old despairs I fought vainly to avoid).

Overwhelmed in the lostness of my kindred soul

alive the brimming haunts of betrayal’s sad eyes.

Bravely resisting time’s cruel, crooked hand -

numbed a greying sea’s massing rolling pitch.

Casting long and low against its swelling pride -

washing in-and-out, tide-upon-tide, too gladly

exhausted upon a sandy surf’s glistening foams.

Abroad, it was, that I found myself discovered

(almost immediately as I discovering looked).

Transfixed a nethering shoal’s nearest redoubts,

cradling fey promising songs of virginal rebirth.

Like quicksilver’d flashes lit a ruddy dawn’s rays,

whispering demurely ’neath morning’s low hums.

Flashing on lifted waves thrusting ashore, met

a lifting fog’s muted, misty skirt, casting astern.

A’ sudden plunged love o’er the face of the deep,

slipping, sliding, unbroken its vast running tides.

Cast a turbulent ocean’s moaning deep loss -

awash blissful songs sung amid carefree daze.

Making me know no other place so safe -

cradled within my castaway lover’s moiling gaze.

Bearing me up even as I was birthed, across

undying storms bursting Atlantic’s grey bows.

Once a’ locked hoary time’s toiling, carnal seaways -

(bestirr’d sirens’ healing songs of blackest depths).

Offering wanton treasures flung flotsam’d regrets

lest thrust upon carrying seas I wouldst forever sail.

Where no wind nor trouble could rightly prevail -

so deep, and great, this thrice-bound love brought.

Newborn into the shadows of my riparian haunts -

bending southwards bound upon steady rhythm

safely haven’d within heaven’s flaming descents.

- R.E. Slater

Oct 22, 2012

rev. Oct 25, Nov 5-6, 19, 2012; Jan 8, 2013

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved