Poetry Friday: The Influenza, 1890 - Winston Churchill

The Influenza, 1890 - Winston Churchill, age 15


Oh how shall I its deeds recount
Or measure the untold amount
Of ills that it has done?
From China's bright celestial land
E'en to Arabia's thirsty sand
It journeyed with the sun.

O'er miles of bleak Siberia's plains
Where Russian exiles toil in chains
It moved with noiseless tread;
And as it slowly glided by
There followed it across the sky
The spirits of the dead.

The Ural peaks by it were scaled
And every bar and barrier failed
To turn it from its way;
Slowly and surely on it came,
Heralded by its awful fame,
Increasing day by day.

On Moscow's fair and famous town
Where fell the first Napoleon's crown
It made a direful swoop;
The rich, the poor, the high, the low
Alike the various symptoms know,
Alike before it droop.

Nor adverse winds, nor floods of rain
Might stay the thrice-accursed bane;
And with unsparing hand,
Impartial, cruel and severe
It travelled on allied with fear
And smote the fatherland.

Fair Alsace and forlorn Lorraine,
The cause of bitterness and pain
In many a Gaelic breast,
Receive the vile, insatiate scourge,
And from their towns with it emerge
And never stay nor rest.

And now Europa groans aloud,
And 'neath the heavy thunder-cloud
Hushed is both song and dance;
The germs of illness wend their way
To westward each succeeding day
And enter merry France.

Fair land of Gaul, thy patriots brave
Who fear not death and scorn the grave
Cannot this foe oppose,
Whose loathsome hand and cruel sting,
Whose poisonous breath and blighted wing
Full well thy cities know.

In Calais port the illness stays,
As did the French in former days,
To threaten Freedom's isle;
But now no Nelson could o'erthrow
This cruel, unconquerable foe,
Nor save us from its guile.

Yet Father Neptune strove right well
To moderate this plague of Hell,
And thwart it in its course;
And though it passed the streak of brine
And penetrated this thin line,
It came with broken force.

For though it ravaged far and wide
Both village, town and countryside,
Its power to kill was o'er;
And with the favouring winds of Spring
(Blest is the time of which I sing)
It left our native shore.

God shield our Empire from the might
Of war or famine, plague or blight
And all the power of Hell,
And keep it ever in the hands
Of those who fought 'gainst other lands,
Who fought and conquered well.

Source

Poetry Friday - 1492 - Emma Lazarus

1492
Emma Lazarus, (1849 - 1887)

Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate,
Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword,
The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford,
Close-locked was every port, barred every gate.
Then smiling, thou unveil’dst, O two-faced year,
A virgin world where doors of sunset part,
Saying, “Ho, all who weary, enter here!
There falls each ancient barrier that the art
Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear
Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!”

---

The Alhambra Decree was signed March 31, 1492, and Spain's Jews originally had four months to leave. That was extended by 10 days to August 10th.

Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492. In his crew was the interpreter, Luis de Torres. Born Yosef ben HaLevi HaIvri, he had converted to Catholicism on August 2nd.

The Alhambra Decree was officially revoked on December 16, 1968.

Poem: The Genetic and Synthetic

The below poem of mine was entered into the 2016 International Society of Family History Writers and Editors Excellence-in-Writing competition and was awarded second-place in its category.

I've added a few footnotes for the references.

The Genetic and Synthetic

I research my roots:
The nucleotides of life
and the synthesis
of ancestral experience
make me whole.

If she hadn’t left
her Texas home at age 20;¹
If he hadn’t fled
the Russian pogroms;²
These words wouldn’t be written.

Rural Transylvania, 1910.
A gun fired:
One child maimed;
One child entered
a depression-fueled starvation
he never exited;
One child, my maternal grandfather,
stood witness.³

Philippines, 1945.
A gun fired:
One soldier cleaning his rifle;
One soldier entered
a hospital he never exited;
His brother, my paternal grandfather,
stood Kaddish.⁴

Neither event changed my DNA,
but both influenced how I was raised,
who I became.

1. My maternal grandmother, Myrtle Vanevery Deutsch
2. My paternal 2nd great grandfathers, Moshe Leyb Cruvant, Morris Blatt, and Selig Dudelczak could all be referenced here, with a little flexibility on the term, Russian, to include Lithuania, Poland, and Volhynia, respectively.
3. More details can be read here.
4. More details can be read here.

Sepia Saturday 300: Images of the Deceased

Sepia Saturday - A weekly meme providing a visual prompt for participants to share their own photographs. (I'm going to share some poetry as well.)

It is thought that this image may be an example of a Post-Mortem photograph, where at least one of the individuals is deceased. An appropriate image as we are in the month of October and Halloween. The boy and man both look as if this might be the case.

I don't have any post-mortem photographs, but the feeling one gets seeing images of the dead reminds me of the images I saw in French Children of the Holocaust, by Serge Klarsfeld, 1996. (The book can be viewed online.)

A publication of Jewish children deported from France (very many of which were not French nationals, but earlier refugees from elsewhere in Europe). The book includes alphabetical lists of children by convoy, indicating surname, forename, birthdate, birthplace, assembly center, convoy number, deportation date, and last address in France, followed by a photographic section featuring portraits and other information on many of the children. There are two indexes, a general name index to the deportation lists and an name index to the photograph section.

Ida CANTKERT was born on October 14, 1927, in Paris (12th arr.). She lived at 20 rue Basfroi (11th arr.). She was deported on convoy 68 of February 10, 1944, with her sisters Frida, age 4, and Suzanne, 8, and her brother Paul, 10.

***

It is possible that I am related distantly to Ida and her siblings. My second great grandmother, Rose Cantkert Newmark, came from Warka, Poland, on the outskirts of Warsaw. The deportation lists indicate that Ida and her siblings were born in Paris. But there is no indication of where her parents were born.

Excerpt from: Mid-Term Break - by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

[full poem]

Sepia Saturday 298: Spaniels; Hungary; Carl Sandburg; and 18

Sepia Saturday - A weekly meme providing a visual prompt for participants to share their own photographs. (I'm going to share poetry as well. Follow the links for the complete poems.)

This week's image prompt was taken in 1931 outside the Vanderbilt mansion. It shows two daughters of Gloria Vanderbilt and Count László Széchenyi, along with two dogs. The dogs aren't named, and I haven't been able to verify if they belonged to the Széchenyi family. They are almost certainly English Springer Spaniels, a breed with which I am very familiar, as I grew up with several.

From left to right below: Daisy (half Springer, half Poodle); Molly; Benny


Excerpt from: "The Two Dogs," Robert Burns (1759-1796)

’TWAS in that place o’ Scotland’s isle
That bears the name o’ auld King Coil,
Upon a bonnie day in June,
When wearin’ thro’ the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather’d ance upon a time.

Count László Széchenyi (1879-1938) was Hungary's first minister to the United States. My maternal grandfather, Martin Deutsch, was born in Hungary. (The town in which he was born is now part of Romania.) I visited a few of the villages of my Transylvanian ancestors back in 2012.

Below are:
1) My grandfather's birthplace. 2012. (Varalmas, Hungary; Almasu, Romania)
2) The building my great grandmother, Helen (Lichtman) Deutsch grew up in. 2012. (Margitta, Hungary; Marghita, Romania.) It served as a home, and a place of business for her family. A different family now lives there.
3) The Lichtman leather shop in earlier days. (My grandfather emigrated with his family in 1913 at the age of six. Several Lichtman relatives remained in Hungary, and of those who did, there were only a handful of Holocaust survivors.)





Excerpt from: The People, Yes, Carl Sandburg, 1936.



Now that I have returned us to the Vanderbilts, I could end the post, as I don't have any connections to the Vanderbilts to discuss.  (I do have a fourth cousin who shares initials with, and has been on a date with a Vanderbilt descendant, but I don't usually blog about living people. So I'll just link to the Entertainment Weekly article.)

I also have a difficult time ignoring the number '18' inscribed on the image prompt. It is a meaningful number in Hebrew mysticism. In Hebrew the letters of the alphabet are associated with numbers, similar to as if we said A=1 and B=2. The Hebrew number for 18, חי, is also the word 'Chai,' meaning 'life.'

Here's a photograph of myself, age 8, after receiving a 'Chai' necklace for a birthday gift.

Sepia Saturday 297: Washing Lines

Sepia Saturday - A weekly meme providing a visual prompt for participants to share their own photographs. (I'm going to share some poetry as well. Follow the links for the complete poems.)

From "The World Transformed"
by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

UNWARMED by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

From "Jerusalem" by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight

***
I noticed this week's image comes from the Missouri State Archives. I also recalled seeing washing lines in photographs from the 1908 report bythe Civic League of St. Louis on the housing conditions in the Carr Square tenements.

I have several ancestors who lived in or very near to the neighborhood, before and after the report.

Here's one of the said images:

I'm not entirely sure how the washing lines between the buildings worked. I'm guessing there was a pulley system.

Here's a photograph of my great grandmother, Margaret (Denyer) Vanevery. She is outside of her El Paso, Texas home. I believe a washboard can be seen leaning against the house. It was probably taken in the early 1920s. Evva (or Evelyn), the photographer, mailed it to her sister, Myrtle, my grandmother. Myrtle moved to St. Louis in 1920. Margaret died in 1923.

Poetry Friday: Niagara Fell (March 1848)

I wrote this poem five years ago.

George Van Every, the first son of my second great grandparents, Samuel and Abigail (Stuart) Van Every, was born eight months after the incident, in Dumfries, Brant County, Ontario - about 125 km from Niagara Falls.

Niagara Fell
©2010 John C Newmark

In 1848, on a day in March
Huge chunks of ice
Pierced Niagara’s head.
Downstream, the falls dried up.

Residents looked down -
The mighty thunder, silenced -
Then up to the sky, fearful.
News traveled slowly.

The churches were filled
as the fish died.
Tourists came from far
To walk across the bed.

When the ice dam cleared
Some must have felt foolish,
While others just waited
for their god’s next missive.

More about Niagara's fall - March 29-30, 1848

Poetry Friday: Careers

Robert Graves is well-known for his poetry, close to 50 collections were published during his lifetime, and his novels, including, I Claudius and Claudius the God. 

The below poem appeared in his second collection of poetry, Fairies and Fusiliers. It's clear he had already realized it was okay to go into a career his father was good at. However, the poem illustrates quite well the desire in some families to excel at different pursuits.

Careers - Robert Graves
(from Fairies and Fusiliers, 1918.)

FATHER is quite the greatest poet
   That ever lived anywhere.
You say you’re going to write great music—
   I chose that first: it’s unfair.
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and
      do Christ and angels, or lovely pears
      and apples and grapes on a green dish,
      or storms at sea, or anything lovely,
Because that’s been taken by Claire.

It’s stupid to be an engine-driver,
   And soldiers are horrible men.
I won’t be a tailor, I won’t be a sailor,
   And gardener’s taken by Ben.
It’s unfair if you say that you’ll write great
      music, you horrid, you unkind (I sim-
      ply loathe you, though you are my
      sister), you beast, cad, coward, cheat,
      bully, liar!
Well? Say what’s left for me then!

But we won’t go to your ugly music.
   (Listen!) Ben will garden and dig,
And Claire will finish her wondrous pictures
   All flaming and splendid and big.
And I’ll be a perfectly marvellous carpenter,
      and I’ll make cupboards and benches
      and tables and … and baths, and
      nice wooden boxes for studs and
      money,
And you’ll be jealous, you pig!

Poetry Friday: Heredity by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It's been over a year since I decided to share a genealogically-related poem on a Friday.
Here's one by New Englander, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Heredity
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)

A SOLDIER of the Cromwell stamp,
With sword and psalm-book by his side,
At home alike in church and camp:
Austere he lived, and smileless died.

But she, a creature soft and fine—
From Spain, some say, some say from France;
Within her veins leapt blood like wine—
She led her Roundhead lord a dance!

In Grantham church they lie asleep;
Just where, the verger may not know.
Strange that two hundred years should keep
The old ancestral fires aglow!

In me these two have met again;
To each my nature owes a part:
To one, the cool and reasoning brain;
To one, the quick, unreasoning heart.

Source
Author Image

Two Poems for Today - April 19

The Midnight Ride of William Dawes - by Helen F Moore (1896)

I am a wandering, bitter shade,
Never of me was a hero made;
Poets have never sung my praise,
Nobody crowned my brow with bays;
And if you ask me the fatal cause,
I answer only, “My name was Dawes.”

‘Tis all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear –
My name was Dawes and his Revere.

When the lights from the old North Church flashed out,
Paul Revere was waiting about,
But I was already on my way.
The shadows of night fell cold and gray
As I rode, with never a break or a pause;
But what was the use, when my name was Dawes!

History rings with his silvery name;
Closed to me are the portals of fame.
Had he been Dawes and I Revere,
No one had heard of him, I fear.
No one has heard of me because
He was Revere and I was Dawes.

***
Excerpt from Campo dei Fiori, by Czeslaw Milosz (1943)

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.

(full poem)

April 19th is filled with historical events. 

Many Americans think of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.  (Some erroneously place it on April 18th, but it was a midnight ride. The battles took place the next day.)

But this is also the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. The most recent edition of Tablet Magazine was devoted to Warsaw, including a haunting look at repurposed gravestones.

Note: According to this source William Dawes, who rode with Revere, was related to Henry L Dawes, for whom The Dawes Act was named.

Poetry Friday: Jefferson Howard - Edgar Lee Masters

Jefferson Howard - Edgar Lee Masters (from Spoon River Anthology)

MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:
Hating slavery, but no less war.
I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
With its dominant forces drawn from New England,
Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
With wife and children heavy to carry—
Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,
And reaping evils I had not sown;
Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,
Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
Tangled with fates all alien to me,
Deserted by hands I called my own.
Then just as I felt my giant strength
Short of breath, behold my children
Had wound their lives in stranger gardens—
And I stood alone, as I started alone!
My valiant life! I died on my feet,
Facing the silence—facing the prospect
That no one would know of the fight I made.

***
Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters, 1916, is a collection of poems written as epitaphs for a fictional village. While the village is fictional, there is a Spoon River in Illinois, and Edgar Lee Masters spent his youth nearby the river in Lewistown, IL, about 40 miles SW of Peoria.

Poetry Friday: Written in January, 1833 - Hartley Coleridge

WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 1833

The old year is gone--so uncivil was I,
That I made not a couplet to bid him good bye,
But now that the new year is fairly come in,
Not to bid him a welcome, were surely a sin--

So welcome I bid him, tho' not to myself,
Yet to all who are wealthy in hope or in pelf,
All hearty good fellows to whom life is dear,
I heartily wish you a happy new year.

To the man, who is fit to be married, a wife,
And a grave unto him that is tired of life.
To my friends, that they may not have much to forgive,
To my foes, that they just may forget that I live,

To my love--that her charms may to her be a blessing,
Tho' to me I confess, they are rather distressing--
For the man of her choice may good fortune await him,
And then--why, I'll try very hard not to hate him.

-- Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849)

I share this not only because New Year thoughts are still on my brain, nor only because it was written 180 years ago this month, but also because of the author.

I am intrigued by a person who chooses a creative profession, when they have to bear the albatross of a father who was great in that profession. They have to know that no matter how good they are, they will always be compared to their father. I don't even have to tell you who his father was, do I?

Hartley's work was considered of sufficient quality for W.H. Auden to include him in his 5-volume "Poets of the English Language" in 1950. That's where I was first introduced to his poetry. He was ranked 'among the foremost sonneteers of our time," by a contemporary. Personally, I think his work would be better known today if he had had a different surname.

Poetry Friday: What is Dying - Luther F Beecher

The below poem is read at many funerals. It has been attributed to several sources, but more about that below.

What is Dying?

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze, and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to meet and mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: “ There! She's gone!” Gone where? Gone from my slght—that is all. She is just as large in mast and bull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to hear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me. and not in her.

And just at that moment when someone at my side says: " There! She's gone!” there are other eyes that are watching for her coming; and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “ There she comes!"

And that is—" dying."

Who wrote this?

This poem, and slight variataions, have been attributed to: Victor Hugo, Col. David Marcus, Margaret M. Stevens, Dr. Harold Blake Walker, Henry Van Dyke, and Bishop Charles Henry Brent. Due to the alleged attribution to Victor Hugo, and my obsession with the French author, I have been researching the origin of the quote for about ten years. In March of 2012 Google Books finally digitized a book from the early 1900s that gives credit where credit is due. 

(Over the years I have conducted some limited research in libraries at a nearby university and a nearby seminary browsing works of Herny Van Dyke and Bishop Brent searching for the poem. However, my research has mostly been restricted to online sources.)

The Northwestern Christian Advocate, July 13, 1904, credits the poem to a Luther F. Beecher. And the text of the poem is as given above.



Who was Luther F. Beecher?

Is he a retired Brookline Massachusetts minister who died in 1903?
A Reverend in South Nyack, NY in 1873?
The Principal of Saratoga Female Seminary in Saratoga, NY in 1858?
(There's no reason these can't be the same individual; They probably are.)

Is it possible that the source above credits the poem incorrectly?

Yes. The Northwestern Christian Advocate does pre-date all the above alleged sources except: Victor Hugo, Bishop Brent, and Henry Van Dyke. If Bishop Brent is the original source, he was young when he composed it, as he was only 42 in 1904. Henry Van Dyke was 52.

Poetry Friday: Trinity Place - Carl Sandburg

Trinity Place - Carl Sandburg - from "Smoke and Steel" (1922)

The grave of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street.

The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops.

And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love.

An iron picket fence … and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks … straw hats, faces, legs … a singing, talking, hustling river … down the great street that ends with a Sea.

… easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton.
… easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton.
… easy are the great governments and the great steamboats.

Fifteen Poems from the Archives

I am an aficionado of poetry. I enjoy reading, writing, and performing  the art. In the past six years I have devoted several blog posts to poetry. Below are fifteen of these. Click on the 'Poetry' label at the bottom of the post to find more.

Poems Written by Me

1. Genealogy Research
2. Where I'm From
3. A Toast to the First and the Fourth of July
4. E Pluribus Unum; Cognatus, Ergo Sum
5. Divergent, Yet Intersecting
6. Ode to a Microspatula
7. Genealogy Limericks 

Poems Written by Kin

1. Mother - by Willa Van Every
2. Mother - by Ida Green 

Poems Written by Others

1. Our Mother Was the Pussy-Cat - by Edward Lear (an unfinished sequel to The Owl and the Pussy-Cat)
2. On Going Home For Christmas - by Edgar Guest
3. To a Lady - by Victor Hugo (Translation by Thomas Hardy)
4. On the Burial of his Brother - by Caius Valerius Catullus (Translation by Aubrey Vincent Beardsley)
5. The Mounds of Cahokia - by Micah P. Flint
6. The Jewish Cemetery at Newport - by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

On Going Home For Christmas - Edgar Guest

Edgar Guest's sentimental poetry is perfect for the season.  Many people object to the mention of Christmas prior to Thanksgiving, but the earlier the below poem gets posted, the more likely it will have any impact on holiday plans.  And I subscribe 100% to the message. 

On Going Home for Christmas - by Edgar Guest

He little knew the sorrow that was in his vacant chair;
He never guessed they’d miss him, or he’d surely have been there;
He couldn’t see his mother or the lump that filled her throat,
Or the tears that started falling as she read his hasty note;
And he couldn’t see his father, sitting sorrowful and dumb,
Or he never would have written that he thought he couldn’t come.

He little knew the gladness that his presence would have made,
And the joy it would have given, or he never would have stayed.
He didn’t know how hungry had the little mother grown
Once again to see her baby and to claim him for her own.
He didn’t guess the meaning of his visit Christmas Day
Or he never would have written that he couldn’t get away.

He couldn’t see the fading of the cheeks that once were pink,
And the silver in the tresses; and he didn’t stop to think
How the years are passing swiftly, and next Christmas it might be
There would be no home to visit and no mother dear to see.
He didn’t think about it — I’ll not say he didn’t care.
He was heedless and forgetful or he’d surely have been there.

Are you going home for Christmas? Have you written you’ll be there?
Going home to kiss the mother and to show her that you care?
Going home to greet the father in a way to make him glad?
If you’re not I hope there’ll never come a time you’ll wish you had.
Just sit down and write a letter — it will make their heart strings hum
With a tune of perfect gladness — if you’ll tell them that you’ll come.

Poems to Celebrate a New Year

To-Morrow
Edgar Guest

He was going to be all that a mortal should be
To-morrow.
No one should be kinder or braver than he
To-morrow.
A friend who was troubled and weary he knew,
Who'd be glad of a lift and who needed it, too;
On him he would call and see what he could do
To-morrow.

Each morning he stacked up the letters he'd write
To-morrow.
And thought of the folks he would fill with delight
To-morrow.
It was too bad, indeed, he was busy to-day,
And hadn't a minute to stop on his way;
More time he would have to give others, he'd say,
To-morrow.

The greatest of workers this man would have been
To-morrow.
The world would have known him, had he ever seen
To-morrow.
But the fact is he died and he faded from view,
And all that he left here when living was through
Was a mountain of things he intended to do
To-morrow.

Old Years and New
Edgar Guest

Old years and new years, all blended into one,
The best of what there is to be, the best of what is gone --
Let's bury all the failures in the dim and dusty past
And keep the smiles of friendship and laughter to the last.

Old years and new years, life's in the making still;
We haven't come to glory yet, but there's the hope we will;
The dead old year was twelve months long, but from it we're free,
And what's one year of good or bad to all the years to be?

Old years and new years, we need them one and all
To reach the dome of character and build its sheltering wall;
Past failures tried the souls of us, but if their tests we stood,
The sum of what we are to be may yet be counted good.

Auld Lang Syne (Modern English translation)
Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
Sin' auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.

Chorus

And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

Poetry: Keepsake Mill - Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Born on November 13, 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson would be 159 years old today. Perhaps known best for his novels Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, he also wrote poetry, including A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), from which the below poem comes.

Keepsake Mill

OVER the borders, a sin without pardon,
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
Down by the banks of the river, we go.

Here is the mill with the humming of thunder,
Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running under—
Marvellous places, though handy to home!

Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.

Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.

Home from the Indies and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all shall come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.

You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past.

Image: National Galleries of Scotland

Poetry: Julian Ursin Niemcewicz - America and General Washington

My third and final entry for the Great American Local Poem Genealogy Challenge

The challenge is to:

Find a poem by a local poet, famous or obscure, from the region one of your ancestors lived in. It can be about an historical event, a legend, a person, or even about some place (like a river) or a local animal. [follow link for complete rules]

To recap:

• I have found a poem by a Hungarian from Kolosvar, nearby where my maternal grandfather was born, describing a local forest.
• I have also found a poem which references St. Louis, by a St. Louisan who became an expatriate to England.

Half of my maternal ancestry is Hungarian. My goal was to find a final poem for this challenge to represent my Polish ancestors - 75% of my paternal ancestry. But I found a Polish poet who was born in Lithuania, capturing the remaining 25%. Furthermore, he spent some time in Germany, where a few of my maternal ancestors originated. And he spent some time in America as well.

JULIAN URSIN NIEMCEWICZ (1758-1841), Polish scholar, poet and statesman, was born in 1757 in Lithuania. In the earlier part of his life he acted as adjutant to Kosciusko, was taken prisoner with him at the fatal battle of Maciejowice (1794), and shared his captivity at St Petersburg. On his release he travelled for some time in America, where he married. After the Congress of Vienna he was secretary of state and president of the constitutional committee in Poland, but in 1830—1831 he was again driven into exile. He died in Paris on the 21st of April 1841. [Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition]

Niemcewicz, scion of a moderately well-to-do Polish noble family, graduated from the Warsaw Corps of Cadets.

He subsequently served as aide to Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and visited France, England and Italy.

During the Great Sejm of 1788–92, Niemcewicz was a deputy and an active member of the Patriotic Party that pushed through the historic Constitution of May 3, 1791. He subsequently was a founder of the Zgromadzenie Przyjaciół Konstytucji Rządowej (Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution), formed to help support and implement that progressive document.

After the victory of the Targowica Confederation in 1792 and the consequent overthrow of the May 3 Constitution, Niemcewicz, along with other Patriotic Party members, emigrated to Germany. [Wikipedia entry]

And here's the poem. (Despite the title, it's as much about Poland and the events that led to Niemcewicz's exile. His life reminds me of the poet, Victor Hugo, for whom I created a website back in 2000.)

AMERICA AND GENERAL WASHINGTON

With my wounded commander* compelled to depart
From thee, oppressed Poland, the pride of my heart;
An asylum I sought o'er the dark rolling sea,
In the land of the noble, the brave and the free;
But e'en there the sad thought of my country would rise,
And the tears of deep anguish would roll from my eyes.

In boundless savannas, where man never strayed,
Amid woods that ne'er echoed the axe's keen blade:
In the foaming abyss, where the clouds of bright steam
Round the falls of the roaring Niagara gleam;
And on the deep sea, when the white sails are spread,
Lo! the shade of my country, all gory and dead.

Full of bliss to my heart is the thought of that day
When to Washington's mansion I wended my way;
To visit the warrior, the hero and sage,
Whose name is the day-star to each coming age;
By his valor the new world rose happy and free,
And her glory his endless memento shall be.

His features are still on my memory defined,
With the fadeless and delicate colors of mind.
Full, noble, majestic, with a crown of swan-hair.
And a brow deeply writ with the finger of care:
Old Roman simplicity marked his fine face,
Expressive of dignity, grandeur and grace.

How oft on his accents with rapture I hung,
While wisdom and kindness distill'd from his tongue;
And whene'er the sad tale of our fall I'd relate —
How brilliant our struggle, yet awful our fate —
A sweet tear-drop of sympathy stole down his cheek —
Better pledge of affection than language could speak.

Precious tear! a rich proof of his sorrow for thee,
Loved home of my fathers! once peaceful and free.
And oh, could I that gem which so peerlessly grows,
In some costly and beautiful crystal enclose,
So priceless a treasure a witness I'd keep,
That o'er Poland's sad ruin a great man could weep.

* General Kosciuszko

Source for poem: Poets and Poetry of Poland: a Collection of Polish Verse, 1881, p. 165. [It's not clear if the translation was done by the editor of the collection, Paul Soboleski, or someone else.]

Note: Further research on this author indicates he wrote some rather polemical works including "The Year 3333" and "Levi and Sara, or, the Jewish lovers" - which lead me to compare him to my distant cousin, Chief Magistrate William Stoughton, who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. While he represents a region where some ancestors originated, he doesn't represent those ancestors. (Except in foreshadowing what would happen a century after his death.) But while I am less fond of the man, I can attempt to separate the poem from its author. The patriotic imagery in the poem above is still very moving.

Poetry: TS Eliot - The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Second submission for West in New England's Great American Local Poem Genealogy Challenge

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888, where he lived until 1905. From 1905-1914 he was in Boston and Cambridge, MA furthering his studies at Milton Academy and Harvard University (Except for 1910-1911, which he spent in Paris). In 1914 he moved to London where he spent most of his adult life. [source]

Since most of my paternal ancestors were residing in St. Louis from 1890-1905, and since the rest were in London, and since I have maternal English ancestry as well, I think Eliot definitely qualifies as a poet from an ancestral region.

Excerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - by TS Eliot

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Full poem

Many have suggested that the yellow fog in these stanzas was directly inspired by the factory smoke that filled the St. Louis atmosphere at the turn of the century.I believe this is the most direct reference Eliot makes to St. Louis in any of his poetry, though some have identified the "Brown God" in his The Dry Salvages as the Mississippi river.

As I also mentioned back in February of 2008, Eliot said regarding the William Prufrock Furniture company that was present in St. Louis during his youth:

"I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated."

At the moment I have one more submission in mind. I've found a collection of Polish poetry in translation, but I have yet to select a specific poem.