HENRY PETERSON 1818-1891 PUBLISHER, editor, poet, Peterson was born in Philadelphia, where he spent most of his life. For twenty years he was assistant editor of the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, a weekly paper founded by Benjamin Franklin. He published two volumes of poems, and also wrote several plays. FROM AN "ODE FOR DECORATION DAY" O GALLANT brothers of the generous South, In your unnumbered vales, where God thought best. And ye, O Northmen! be ye not outdone In generous thought and deed. We all do need forgiveness, every one; And they that give shall find it in their need. Spare of your flowers to deck the stranger's grave, A soul more daring, resolute, and brave, Ne'er won a world's applause. A brave man's hatred pauses at the tomb. For him some Southern home was robed in gloom, LONG'S AM. POEMS- -13 5 JO 15 20 Some wife or mother looked with longing eyes Through the sad days and nights with tears and sighs, Then let your foeman's grave remembrance share : And in the realms of Sorrow all are friends. 5 WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 1819-1895 THE poetry of Story is marked by refinement and careful workman ship rather than by power. His fame rests chiefly upon his work as a sculptor. He was born at Salem, Massachusetts, was graduated from Harvard, and started life as a lawyer. His father was a justice of the United States Supreme Court. The son, however, gave up law for sculpture, and spent the greater part of his life in Italy, where he died. He published several volumes of essays and poems, one novel, and one play. IO VICTIS I SING the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the Battle of The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife; Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of fame, 10 But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart, Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part; Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes burned in ashes away, From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood at the dying of day With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone, With Death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown, While the voice of the world shouts its chorus, those who have won; While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the breeze and the sun Glad banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying feet Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, I stand on the field of defeat, 5 In the shadow, with those who have fallen, and wounded, and dying, and there Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain-knotted brows, breathe a prayer, Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, "They only the victory win, ΙΟ Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the demon that tempts us within; Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the world holds on high; Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight,—if need be, to die." Speak, History! who are Life's victors? Unroll thy long annals, and say, Are they those whom the world called the victors—who won the success of a day? 15 The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans, who fell at Thermopyla's tryst, Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates? Pilate or Christ? JULIA WARD HOWE 1819 Mrs. Howe was born in New York city, where her father, Samuel Ward, was a banker. She was married to Dr. S. G. Howe of Boston, and with him she edited an antislavery paper in that city. Her life has been a long and busy one. She has written several volumes of verse, travel, and biography; and she has been an earnest advocate, both as a writer and as a lecturer, of woman suffrage and of prison reforms. BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. 8 I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal ; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 20 THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS 1819-1892 THE poem given below, Lines on a Bust of Dante, is the best-known short poem by Parsons. He also translated several cantos of Dante's Inferno, and he was a lifelong and sympathetic student of the great Italian poet. He was born in Boston and educated at the Boston Latin School. He was a dentist by profession, and practiced in London and Boston, residing in the latter city during the last twenty years of his life. He is the author of several volumes of verse. To that cold Ghibelline's gloomy sight Who could have guessed the visions came In circles of eternal flame? The lips as Cumæ's cavern close, The rigid front, almost morose, But for the patient hope within, 15 20 |