CHAPTER 17
Sam. L. Simpson
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song!—I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
As in the case of William Cullen Bryant and Edwin Markham, Sam. L. Simpson's first poem was his best, at least the most famous, although he continued to write for 31 years. "Beautiful Willamette" or "Ad Willametam", as he originally called it, was written when he was about half way along in his twenty-second year. He had just severed a law partnership with J. Quinn Thornton in Albany. The section of the river often pointed out, correctly or not, as the place of the poem's composition, is just below the Albany bridge, across from the town. It was first printed in the Albany Democrat for April 18, 1868. It was reprinted by several papers of Oregon, by the leading papers of California, and by some eastern papers. It was not actually his first published poem, however, since as a student at Willamette University he had contributed verse to the Pacific Christian Advocate.
No comprehensive essay on Sam. L. Simpson's life has been written. There are three pages of biography and comment in Horner's Oregon Literature and a short biographical sketch in the introduction to his volume of poems The Gold-Gated West, published in 1910, eleven years after his death.
He was six months old when he was brought across the plains in 1846 from Missouri to Oregon City. His parents later settled in Polk and Marion Counties,
