Part 27

Henry Thompson Stanton, one of the most popular poets Kentucky has produced, was born at Alexandria, Virginia, June 30, 1834. He was brought by his father, Judge Richard Henry Stanton, to Maysville, Kentucky, when he was only two years old. Stanton was educated at the Maysville Academy and at West Point, but he was not graduated. He entered the Confederate army as captain of a company in the Fifth Kentucky regiment, and through various promotions he surrendered as a major. Major Stanton saw much service on the battlefields of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. After the war he practised law for a time and was editor of the Maysville _Bulletin_ until 1870, when he removed to Frankfort, Kentucky, to become chief assistant to the State Commissioner of Insurance. Major Stanton's first volume of verse was _The Moneyless Man and Other Poems_ (Baltimore, 1871). This title poem, written for a wandering elocutionist who "struck" the town of Maysville one day, and asked the major to write him "a poem that would draw tears from any audience," made him famous and miserable for the rest of his life. For the nomad he "dashed off this special lyric and it brought all Kentucky to the mourners' bench. It was more deadly as a tear-provoker than 'Stay, Jailer, Stay,' and though the author wrote other things which were far better, the public would never admit it, and many people innocently courted death by rushing up to Stanton and exclaiming: 'Oh, and is this Major Stanton who wrote 'The Moneyless Man?' So glad to meet you.'" One Kentucky poet took the philosophy of _The Moneyless Man_ too seriously, and _A Reply to the Moneyless Man_ was the pathetic result. The rhythm of the poem is very pleasing, but it is, in a word, melodramatic. Major Stanton's second and final collection of his verse was _Jacob Brown and Other Poems_ (Cincinnati, 1875). It contains several poems that are superior to _The Moneyless Man_, but the general reader refuses to read them. From 1875 till 1886 he edited the Frankfort _Yeoman_; and during President Cleveland's first administration he served as Land Commissioner. Besides his poems, Major Stanton wrote a group of paper-backed novels, entitled _The Kents; Social Fetters_ (Washington, 1889); and _A Graduate of Paris_ (Washington, 1890). Major Stanton died at Frankfort, Kentucky, May 8, 1898. Two years later _Poems of the Confederacy_ (Louisville, 1900), containing the war lyrics of the major, was artistically printed as a memorial to his memory. The introduction to the little book was written by Major Stanton's friend and fellow man of letters, Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston, and it is an altogether fitting remembrance for the author of _The Moneyless Man_.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Poems of the Confederacy_ (Louisville, 1900); _Confessions of a Tatler_, by Elvira Miller Slaughter (Louisville, 1905).

THE MONEYLESS MAN

[From _The Moneyless Man and Other Poems_ (Baltimore, 1871)]

Is there no secret place on the face of the earth, Where charity dwelleth, where virtue has birth? Where bosoms in mercy and kindness will heave, When the poor and the wretched shall ask and receive? Is there no place at all, where a knock from the poor, Will bring a kind angel to open the door? Ah, search the wide world wherever you can There is no open door for a Moneyless Man!

Go, look in yon hall where the chandelier's light Drives off with its splendor the darkness of night, Where the rich-hanging velvet in shadowy fold Sweeps gracefully down with its trimmings of gold, And the mirrors of silver take up, and renew, In long lighted vistas the 'wildering view: Go there! at the banquet, and find, if you can, A welcoming smile for a Moneyless Man!

Go, look in yon church of the cloud-reaching spire, Which gives to the sun his same look of red fire, Where the arches and columns are gorgeous within, And the walls seem as pure as a soul without sin; Walk down the long aisles, see the rich and the great In the pomp and the pride of their worldly estate; Walk down in your patches, and find, if you can, Who opens a pew to a Moneyless Man.

Go, look in the Banks, where Mammon has told His hundreds and thousands of silver and gold; Where, safe from the hands of the starving and poor, Lies pile upon pile of the glittering ore! Walk up to their counters--ah, there you may stay 'Til your limbs grow old, 'til your hairs grow gray, And you'll find at the Banks not one of the clan With money to lend to a Moneyless Man!

Go, look to yon Judge, in his dark-flowing gown, With the scales wherein law weighteth equity down; Where he frowns on the weak and smiles on the strong, And punishes right whilst he justifies wrong; Where juries their lips to the Bible have laid, To render a verdict--they've already made: Go there, in the court-room, and find, if you can, Any law for the cause of a Moneyless Man!

Then go to your hovel--no raven has fed The wife who has suffered too long for her bread; Kneel down by her pallet, and kiss the death-frost From the lips of the angel your poverty lost: Then turn in your agony upward to God, And bless, while it smites you, the chastening rod, And you'll find, at the end of your life's little span, There's a welcome above for a Moneyless Man!

"A MENSÁ ET THORO"

[From _Jacob Brown and Other Poems_ (Cincinnati, 1875)]

Both of us guilty and both of us sad-- And this is the end of passion! And people are silly--people are mad, Who follow the lights of Fashion; For she was a belle, and I was a beau, And both of us giddy-headed-- A priest and a rite--a glitter and show, And this is the way we wedded.

There were wants we never had known before, And matters we could not smother; And poverty came in an open door, And love went out at another: For she had been humored--I had been spoiled, And neither was sturdy-hearted-- Both in the ditches and both of us soiled, And this is the way we parted.

A SPECIAL PLEA

[From the same]

Prue and I together sat Beside a running brook; The little maid put on my hat, And I the forfeit took.

"Desist," she cried; "It is not right, I'm neither wife nor sister;" But in her eye there shone such light, That twenty times I kiss'd her.

SWEETHEART[20]

[From _Blades o' Bluegrass_, by Mrs. F. P. Dickey (Louisville, Kentucky, 1892)]

Sweetheart--I call you sweetheart still, As in your window's laced recess, When both our eyes were wont to fill, One year ago, with tenderness. I call you sweetheart by the law Which gives me higher right to feel, Though I be here in Malaga, And you in far Mobile.

I mind me when, along the bay The moonbeams slanted all the night; When on my breast your dark locks lay, And in my hand, your hand so white; This scene the summer night-time saw, And my soul took its warm anneal And bore it here to Malaga From beautiful Mobile.

The still and white magnolia grove Brought winged odors to your cheek, Where my lips seared the burning love They could not frame the words to speak; Sweetheart, you were not ice to thaw, Your bosom neither stone nor steel; I count to-night, at Malaga, Its throbbings at Mobile.

What matter if you bid me now To go my way for others' sake? Was not my love-seal on your brow For death, and not for days to break? Sweetheart, our trothing holds no flaw; There was no crime and no conceal, I clasp you here in Malaga, As erst in sweet Mobile.

I see the bay-road, white with shells, I hear the beach make low refrain, The stars lie flecked like asphodels Upon the green, wide water-plain-- These silent things as magnets draw, They bear me hence with rushing keel, A thousand miles from Malaga, To matchless, fair Mobile.

Sweetheart, there is no sea so wide, No time in life, nor tide to flow, Can rob my breast of that one bride It held so close a year ago. I see again the bay we saw; I hear again your sigh's reveal, I keep the faith at Malaga I plighted at Mobile.

FOOTNOTE:

[20] Copyright, 1892, by the Author.

SARAH M. B. PIATT

Mrs. Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, one of Kentucky's most distinguished poets, was born near Lexington, Kentucky, August 11, 1836. Her grandfather was Morgan Bryan, brother-in-law of Daniel Boone, and one of the proprietors of Bryan's Station, near Lexington, famous in the old Indian wars. When only three years old she left Lexington to make her home near Versailles, Kentucky, where her beautiful mother died in 1844. After her mother's death she was sent to her aunt's home at New Castle, Kentucky. Miss Bryan was graduated from Henry Female College, New Castle; and on June 18, 1861, she was married to John James Piatt, the Ohio poet. George D. Prentice, of course, was the first to praise and print Mrs. Piatt's poems and start her upon a literary career. Her husband, too, has been her chief critic, and responsible for the publication of her work in book form. From the first Mrs. Piatt's poems have been deeply introspective, voicing the heart of a woman in every line. Her work has been cordially commended by Bayard Taylor, William Dean Howells, John Burroughs, Hamilton Wright Mabie, and many other well-known and capable critics in America and Europe. Several of Mrs. Piatt's poems were published in _The Nests at Washington and Other Poems_ (Cincinnati, 1861), but her first independent volume, issued anonymously, was _A Woman's Poems_ (Boston, 1871). This is her best known work, made famous by Bayard Taylor in his delightful little book, _The Echo Club_. This was followed by _A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles and Other Poems_ (1874); _That New World and Other Poems_ (1876); _Poems in Company with Children_ (1877); _Dramatic Persons and Moods_ (1880); _The Children Out of Doors and Other Poems_ (with her husband, 1885); _An Irish Garland_ (1885); _Selected Poems_ (1885); _In Primrose Time_ (1886); _Child's-World Ballads_ (1887); _The Witch in the Glass_ (1889); _An Irish Wild-Flower_ (1891); _An Enchanted Castle_ (1893); _Complete Poems_ (1894, two vols.); _Child's-World Ballads_ (1896, second series); and _The Gift of Tears_ (Cincinnati, 1906). These volumes prove Mrs. Piatt to be one of the most prolific and finest female poets America has produced. English reviewers have often linked her name with Mrs. Browning's and Miss Rossetti's, and if she has not actually reached their rank, she has surely shown work worthy of a high place in the literature of her native country. Mrs. Piatt is at the present time residing at North Bend, Ohio, near Cincinnati.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Echo Club_, by Bayard Taylor (Boston, 1876); _The Poets of Ohio_, by Emerson Venable (Cincinnati, 1909).

IN CLONMEL PARISH CHURCHYARD

AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES WOLFE

[From _An Irish Garland_ (North Bend, Ohio, 1885)]

Where the graves were many, we looked for one. Oh, the Irish rose was red, And the dark stones saddened the setting sun With the names of the early dead. Then, a child who, somehow, had heard of him In the land we love so well, Kept lifting the grass till the dew was dim In the churchyard of Clonmel.

But the sexton came. "Can you tell us where Charles Wolfe is buried?" "I can-- See, that is his grave in the corner there. (Ay, he was a clever man, If God had spared him!) It's many that come To be asking for him," said he. But the boy kept whispering, "Not a drum Was heard,"--in the dusk to me.

(Then the gray man tore a vine from the wall Of the roofless church where he lay, And the leaves that the withering year let fall He swept, with the ivy away; And, as we read on the rock the words That, writ in the moss, we found, Right over his bosom a shower of birds In music fell to the ground).

... Young poet, I wonder did you care, Did it move you in your rest To hear that child in his golden hair, From the mighty woods of the West, Repeating your verse of his own sweet will, To the sound of the twilight bell, Years after your beating heart was still In the churchyard of Clonmel?

A WORD WITH A SKYLARK (A CAPRICE OF HOMESICKNESS)[21]

[From _Songs of Nature_, edited by John Burroughs (New York, 1901)]

If this be all, for which I've listened long, Oh, spirit of the dew! You did not sing to Shelley such a song As Shelley sung to you.

Yet, with this ruined Old World for a nest, Worm-eaten through and through,-- This waste of grave-dust stamped with crown and crest,-- What better could you do?

Ah me! but when the world and I were young, There was an apple-tree, There was a voice came in the dawn and sung The buds awake--ah me!

Oh, Lark of Europe, downward fluttering near, Like some spent leaf at best, You'd never sing again if you could hear My Blue-Bird of the West!

THE GIFT OF TEARS[22]

[From _The Gift of Tears_ (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1906)]

The legend says: In Paradise God gave the world to man. Ah me! The woman lifted up her eyes: "Woman, I have but tears for thee." But tears? And she began to shed, Thereat, the tears that comforted.

(No other beautiful woman breathed, No rival among men had he, The seraph's sword of fire was sheathed, The golden fruit hung on the tree. Her lord was lord of all the earth, Wherein no child had wailed its birth),

Tears to a bride? Yea, therefore tears. In Eden? Yea, and tears therefore. Ah, bride in Eden, there were fears In the first blush your young cheek wore, Lest that first kiss had been too sweet, Lest Eden withered from your feet!

Mother of women! Did you see How brief your beauty, and how brief, Therefore, the love of it must be, In that first garden, that first grief? Did those first drops of sorrow fall To move God's pity for us all? Oh, sobbing mourner by the dead-- One watcher at the grave grass-grown! Oh, sleepless for some darling head Cold-pillowed on the prison-stone, Or wet with drowning seas! He knew, Who gave the gift of tears to you!

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Copyright, 1901, by McClure, Phillips and Company.

[22] Copyright, 1906, by John James Piatt.

BOYD WINCHESTER

Boyd Winchester, author of a charming book on Switzerland, was born in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, September 23, 1836. He came to Kentucky when a youth and entered Centre College, Danville, where he studied for three years. He subsequently spent two years at the University of Virginia. Mr. Winchester was graduated from the Law School of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1858, and that city has been his home ever since. He rose rapidly in his profession; and he later served a single term in the Kentucky legislature, and two terms in the lower House of Congress. President Cleveland appointed Mr. Winchester United States Minister to Switzerland, in 1885, and the next four years he resided at Berne. While in Switzerland Mr. Winchester was an ardent student of the country's history and a keen observer of its aspects and institutions. On his return to the United States he wrote his well-known book, _The Swiss Republic_ (Philadelphia, 1891). A fire his publishers, the Lippincotts, suffered shortly after his volume was issued, destroyed the unsold copies, and the small first edition was soon exhausted. The work has thus become exceedingly scarce.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _National Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New York, 1906, v. xiii); _General Catalogue of Centre College_.

LAKE GENEVA[23]

[From _The Swiss Republic_ (Philadelphia, 1891)]

The Lake of Geneva is the largest of Western Europe, being fifty-seven miles long, and its greatest width nine miles; it has its storms, its waves, and its surge; now placid as a mirror, now furious as the Atlantic; at times a deep-blue sea curling before the gentle waves, then a turbid ocean dark with the mud and sand from its lowest depths; the peasants on its banks still laugh at the idea of there being sufficient cordage in the world to reach the bottom of the _Genfer-See_. It is eleven hundred and fifty-four feet above the sea, and having the same depth, its bottom coincides with the sea-level; the water is of such exceeding purity that when analyzed only 0.157 in 1000 contain foreign elements. The lake lies nearly in the form of a crescent stretching from the southwest towards the northeast. Mountains rise on every side, groups of the Alps of Savoy, Valais, and Jura. The northern or the Swiss shore is chiefly what is known as a _cote_, or a declivity that admits of cultivation, with spots of verdant pasture scattered at its feet and sometimes on its breast, with a cheery range of garden, chalet, wood, and spire; villas, hamlets, and villages seem to touch each other down by the banks, and to form but one town, whilst higher up, they peep out from among the vineyards or nestle under the shade of walnut-trees. At the foot of the lake is the white city of Geneva, of which Bancroft wrote, "Had their cause been lost, Alexander Hamilton would have retired with his bride to Geneva, where nature and society were in their greatest perfection." The city is divided into two parts by the Rhone as it glides out of the basin of the lake on its course towards the Mediterranean. The Arve pours its turbid stream into the Rhone soon after that river issues from the lake. The contrast between the two rivers is very striking, the one being as pure and limpid as the other is foul and muddy. The Rhone seems to scorn the alliance and keeps as long as possible unmingled with his dirty spouse; two miles below the place of their junction a difference and opposition between this ill-assorted couple is still observable; these, however, gradually abate by long habit, till at last, yielding to necessity, and to the unrelenting law which joined them together, they mix imperfect union and flow in a common stream to the end of their course. At the head of the lake begins the valley of the Rhone, where George Eliot said, "that the very sunshine seemed dreary mid the desolation of ruin and of waste in this long, marshy, squalid valley; and yet, on either side of the weary valley are noble ranges of granite mountains, and hill resorts of charm and health...." Standing at almost any point on the Lake of Geneva, to the one side towers Dent-du-Midi, calm, proud, and dazzling, like a queen of brightness; on the other side is seen the Jura through her misty shroud extending in mellow lines, and a cloudless sky vying in depths of color with the azure waters. So graceful the outlines, so varied the details, so imposing the framework in which this lake is set, well might Voltaire exclaim, "Mon lac est le premier," (my lake is the first). For richness combined with grandeur, for softness around and impressiveness above, for a correspondence of contours on which the eye reposes with unwearied admiration, from the smiling aspect of fertility and cultivation at its lower extremity to the sublimity of a savage nature at its upper, no lake is superior to that of Geneva. Numberless almost are the distinguished men and women who have lived, labored, and died upon the shores of this fair lake; every spot has a tale to tell of genius, or records some history. In the calm retirement of Lausanne, Gibbon contemplated the decay of empires; Rousseau and Byron found inspiration on these shores; there is

"Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love! Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought; Thy trees take root in love."

Here is Chillon, with its great white wall sinking into the deep calm of the water, while its very stones echo memorable events, from the era of barbarism in 830, when Count Wala, who had held command of Charlemagne's forces, was incarcerated within the tower of this desolate rock during the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, to the imprisonment of the Salvation Army captain.

"Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls; A thousand feet in depth below, Its massy waters meet and flow; Below the surface of the lake The dark vault lies"

where Bonnivard, the prior of St. Victor and the great asserter of the independence of Geneva, was found when the castle was wrested from the Duke of Savoy by the Bernese.

FOOTNOTE:

[23] Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company.

THOMAS M. GREEN