The Poets and Poetry of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices/Sarah T. Bolton
SARAH T. BOLTON.
Sarah T. Barritt was born at Newport, Kentucky, in the year 1820. Her father was the youngest son of Lemuel Barritt, who distinguished himself as an officer in the American War for Independence. He was an experienced soldier when the war began. When Earl of Dunmore was Governor of the Colony of Virginia, he conferred upon him the command of an exploring expedition to the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers. Mrs. Barritt, Sarah's mother, was a daughter of one of the Pendletons of Virginia, who was a cousin to James Madison.
When Sarah was about three years old, her father removed to Jennings county, Indiana. His cabin was one of the first, around which the wilderness was broken, in that part of the State. He was not well satisfied with frontier life, and while Sarah was yet a little girl, changed his residence to Madison. There his daughter was given the best education which that town afforded. Before she was fourteen years of age, she wrote verses of which her friends were proud. When not more than sixteen years old, several of her poems were published in a newspaper at Madison, which was edited by Nathaniel Bolton. Writing for the paper led to an acquaintance with the printer, and that acquaintance resulted in marriage.
In the early settlement of Indiana, Mr. Bolton had acquired valuable property, and having assumed responsibilities for others as well as for himself, during the financial disasters of 1837-38, became much embarrassed.
As described by William C. Larrabee, in a biographic notice of Mrs. Bolton written for the Ladies' Repository at Cincinnati:
To extricate himself from his difficulties, he opened a tavern on his farm, a short distance west of the city of Indianapolis. Mrs. Bolton, then scarcely seventeen years old, found herself encumbered with the care of a large dairy, and a public house. To aid as much as possible in relieving her husband from embarrassment, she dispensed with help, and with her own hands, often for weeks, and months, performed all the labor of the establishment. Thus, for nearly two years, this child of genius, to whom song was as natural as to the bird of the greenwood, cheerfully resigned herself to incessant toil and care, in order that she might aid her husband in meeting the pecuniary obligations which honesty or honor might impose. During those long and dreary years, of toil and self-denial, she wrote little or nothing. At last the crisis was reached, the work accomplished, and the bird, so long caged and tuneless, was again free to soar into the region of song.
When Mr. Bolton was enabled to return to Indianapolis, he took possession of a neat cottage, which has ever since been the home of the family. There Mrs. Bolton caught up her long-neglected lyre and gracefully invoked the Muse:
The heart that trembled in thy smile so long ?
Come! touch my spirit harp-string, and awaken
The spell, the soul, the witchery of song.
Thou, only thou, canst break the strong control.
And bring, again, the sunlight to my soul.
And wandered with thee over dale and hill,
Conversing with the stars, the streams, the flowers ;
I loved thee then, and oh ! I love thee still.
When thou, my guiding spirit, art not near ;
Come ! I have sought thee till my heart is weary,
And still I watch and wait. Appear ! appear !
In a notice of Mrs. Bolton's poetry, written for the Columbian and Great West in
1850, William D. Gallagher, alluding to this "Invocation," said:
Her adjuration was answered, and since then (1845) the Muse has been her constant companion. .... Some of her poems are among the most beautiful of the day, and are entitled to an hon- orable place in the poetical literature of her country She sings, not because she has a demand from either the book trade or the magazine trade, but because song is the language of her heart, and she mmt sing, or her heart must ache with its suppressed emotions. She explains all this, truthfully and beautifully, in the following graceful stanzas :
Come and fan me with their wing.
Till my soul is full of music,
And I cannot choose but sing.
Let a tiiry cloud bestow
But another drop of water,
And a wave will overflow.
All the dew its heart can bear,
It distributes the remainder
To the sunbeam and the air.
Her power of imitation is very strong. Of all the attempts that have been made to copy the construction and flow of Poe's " Raven," hers is the most successful by far. It occurs in a poem on Poe's Death, and one or two of the stanzas are equal not only to the verse of the " Raven,"' but also to its poetry.
In 1850 the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Free and Accepted Masons of Indiana presented Mrs. Bolton a silver cup, as a prize for an ode written by her, and sung at the laying of the corner-stone of Masonic Hall at Indianapolis. The presentation ser- vices were public. The largest church in Indianapolis was crowded. The Grand H. P, stated the object of the convocation, when James Morrison presented the cup, in an appropriate address. Mrs. Bolton accepted it, with a few words of thankfulness, which the State Sentinel said were "in the best taste, delivered in womanly style, clear and effective."
On the evening of the second of March, 1852, we heard IMrs. Bolton make a speech. Louis Kossuth was then the guest of the State of Indiana. ]Irs. Bolton, who had written a stirring poem to him in 1849, manifested deep interest in his mission to America, and was chosen by the ladies of Indianapolis to present him a purse con- taining one hundred and fifty dollars, which they had contributed. At the close of an address by Kossuth, to a large audience, on the characteristics of the people of Ilun- gary, a committee of ladies, among whom was the wife of Joseph Wright, then Gov- ernor of Indiana, was presented, and Mrs. Bolton, with subdued earnestness of feel- ing, but in clear tones, and with fitting elocution, presented the purse, in a few words which exactly represented the spirit of the last stanza of her poem to the Magyar :
In vain ? ah ! no, the bread thy deeds have cast
Upon the waters will be found again ;
The seed thy thoughts have sown will ripen fast,
Dewed by a nation's tears, and when at last
The harvest whitens, until all are free,
True hearts will turn with reverence to the past.
And from the countless millions yet to be.
Will rise a pa3an song, brave, true Kossuth, for thee.
In his response, Kossuth said :
You say that you have prayed for the success of freedom in my native land — I know, for your- self, you have done more than this. You have contributed to that cause your genius — a genius which it is the pleasure of your State to honor and appreciate, I know that there is a chord in the tender heart of woman that ever responds to justice, and that her impulses are against oppression in every land. I entreat you to go on and bestow your sympathy even as the mother bestows her love on her child. Human liberty is well worthy of a mother's fostering care.
Mr. Bolton was appointed consul to Geneva, Switzerland, by President Pierce, in the spring of 1855. Mrs. Bolton and her daughter, Sallie Ada, accompanied him to Eui'ope. They spent the summer of 1856 in Italy, and the autumn of the same year in Germany. In the spring of 1857 Mrs. Bolton and daughter returned to Indiana. They had been home but a few weeks, when a letter was received from Mr. Bolton, which stated that he had been ill, but was convalescent. Mrs. Bolton had serious fore- bodings, and before sunrise, on the morning after the letter had been read, was on her way back to Switzerland alone. She found her husband attending to liis accustomed duties, when she reached Geneva, but his health was not fully i-estored. In the spring of 1858 he returned with Mrs. Bolton to Indianapolisj His family and friends enter- tained strong hope that, in the climate to which he had neai'ly all his life been accus- tomed, he would regain his health. The hope was vain. He died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1858. Mr. Bolton was a man of important influence in Indiana. He started the first paper published at Lidianapolis ; was an officer of the Legislature, several terms — had been Register of the Land-office, and for many years State Librarian.
Mrs. Bolton, with a son and daughter, resides still at Indianapolis. She possesses property Avhich affords her family competent support.
Wliile in Europe, Mrs. Bolton wrote graphic letters for the Cincinnati Commercial, and contributed numerous poems to its columns and to those of the New York Home Journal, which were suggested by observations or experiences in Switzerland. She publishes rarely now. Her poems have never been collected. We trust she will collect them, and, before another year has elapsed, gratify her friends with a volume.
Mrs. Bolton was well described in an article written for the New York Home Journal, in 1850, by Robert Dale Owen:
With a finely formed head, and ample intellectual forehead, her countenance, without boasting regularity of feature, is of highly pleasing expression, especially when lighted up, as in conversation it usually is, by the bright and cheerful spirit within. Her manners are frank, lively and winning, with little of conventional form and much of genuine propriety about them.
The freedom from conventional form thus ascribed to Mrs. Bolton's manners, is a characteristic arising from the independence and force of character displayed when she abandoned poetic pleasures for domestic duties, and the spirit which then animated her, a spirit worthy of her patriotic ancestors, breathes nobly m many of her poems.
The time to labor will not always last,
And no regret, repentance or repining
Can bring to us again the buried past.
The silent sands of life are falling fast;
Time tells our busy pulses, one by one,
And shall our work, so needful and so vast,
Be all completed, or but just begun
When twilight shadows vail life's dim, departing sun?
What useful lessons have we learned and taught?
What warmth, what radiance have our hearts reflected;
What rich and rare materials have we brought
For deep investigation, earnest thought;
Concealed within the soul's unfathomed mine,
How many a sparkling gem remains un-wrought,
That industry might place on learning's shrine,
Or lavish on the world, to further God's design.
With that prevailing power, undying song.
For human good let every pen be lifted,
For human good let every heart be strong.
Is there no crying sin, no grievous wrong
That ye may help to weaken or repress.
In wayside hut and hovel, midst the throng,
Downtrodden by privation and distress,
Is there no stricken heart that ye can cheer and bless?
Sing idle lays to idle harps no longer,
Go!peal an anthem at the gate of Heaven;
Exertion makes the fainting spirit stronger.
Sing, till the bonds of ignorance are riven,
Till dark oppression from the earth is driven.
One universal ti'iumph song is given,
To hail the long-expected jubilee,
When every bond is broke and every vassal free.
Of eloquence to thrill the immortal soul,
Use not unwisely the transcendant power.
To waken, guide, restrain, direct, control
The heart's deep, deep emotions ; let the goal
Of your ambition be a mind enshrined
By love and gratitude within the scroll,
"Where generations yet unborn shall find
The deathless deeds of those who loved and blessed mankind.
Unknown, unnumber'd in the world's great heart ;
Remove the stubborn errors that encumber
The fields of science, literature and art.
E-end superstition's darkening vail apart.
And hurl to earth blind bigotry, the ban
From which a thousand grievous evils start
To thwart and mar the great Creator's plan,
And break the ties that bind the brotherhood of man.
Perchance, amid your wealth, you scarcely know
That want and woe are leaving fearful traces
Upon the toiling multitude below.
From your abundance can ye not bestow
A mite to smooth the thorny paths they tread ?
Have ye no sympathy with human woe?
No ray of blessed hope and joy to shed
Upon the weary hearts that pine and toil for bread ?
Your palaces, no longer idly stand.
While dens of wickedness and loathsome prisons
Arise, like blighting plague-spots, o'er the land.
Go ! speak a word and lend a helping hand
To rescue men from degradation's thrall.
Nor deem a just and righteous God hath banned
The toiling millions, while the rain-drops fall,
And blessed sunbeams shine alike from heaven for all.
Will leave a track behind, forevermore ;
The lightest wave of influence, set in motion.
Extends and widens to the eternal shore.
We should be wary, then, who go before
A myriad yet to be, and we should take
Our bearing carefully, where breakers roar
And fearful tempests gather ; one mistake
May wreck unnumbered barks that follow in our wake.
PADDLE YOUR OWN CANOE.
To yourself be true,
And where'er your lot may be,
Paddle your own canoe.
Never, though the winds may rave,
Falter nor look back;
But upon the darkest wave
Leave a shining track.
Stem the hardest gale,
You will never fail.
When the world is cold and dark,
Keep an aim in view;
And toward the beacon-mark
Paddle your own canoe.
Every wave that bears you on
To the silent shore,
From its sunny source has gone
To return no more.
Then let not an hour's delay
Cheat you of your due;
But, while it is called to-day.
Paddle your own canoe.
If your birth denies you wealth,
Lofty state and power.
Honest fame and hardy health
Are a better dower.
But if these will not sufiice,
Golden gain pursue;
And to gain the glittering prize,
Paddle your own canoe.
Would you wrest the wreath of fame
From the hand of fate?
Would you write a deathless name
With the good and great?
Would you bless your fellow-men?
Heart and soul imbue
With the holy task, and then
Paddle your own canoe.
Would you crush the tyrant wrong,
In the world's free fight?
With a spirit brave and strong.
Battle for the right.
And to break the chains that bind
The many to the few —
To enfranchise slavish mind —
Paddle your own canoe.
Nothing great is lightly won,
Nothing won is lost;
Every good deed, nobly done.
Will repay the cost.
Leave to Heaven, in humble trust,
All you will to do;
But if you succeed, you must
Paddle your own canoe.
CALL THE ROLL.
Who with helmet, sword and shield.
Will go forth to conquer Erroi',
On life's battle-field?
Who will strike at Superstition,
In his goblin-haunted cell,
And unloose the myriad victims
Fettered by his spell?
Call the roll.
With unwav'riug faith and hope,
To pull down the gory scafibld.
And the gallows-rope?
Who will break the yoke of bondage.
And unbar the prison door,
Saying to the trembling sirmer,
"Go and sin no more?"
Call the roll.
To sweet charity's appeal —
Who will labor for the lowly
With untiring zeal?
Casting bread upon the waters,
Not for human praise,
Trusting heaven again to find it.
After many days?
Call the roll.
Wisely to the noblest use;
Who will clothe the homeless orphan,
Fill the widow's cruse,
And, like him of old Samaria,
Help the stranger in his need.
Reckless of his creed?
Call the roll.
Heir to penury and woe,
Will not tarry to inquire
What has made them so,
Ere he freely shares a pittance
From his meager, hard-earned store.
Or bestows a cup of water,
If he can no more?
Call the roll.
With an absent neighbor's name.
Will excuse the faults and failings,
And defend his fame?
Who will view poor human nature
Only on the brighest side,
Leaving God to judge the evil
Charity would hide?
Call the roll.
WHERE IS THY HOME?
skies are flinging
Rich, mellow light o'er some sea-girded
isle —
Where, in the orange-groves, bright birds
are singing,
And stars are wooing the flowers with
their smile;
Where the soft south wind strays
And palm-leaves quiver,
Through the long pleasant days,
By some bright river —
Is thy home there?
are braving
Danger and death on the red battle-
plain —
Where, in the cannon's smoke, banners
are waving,
And the wild war-horse is trampling
the slain;
Where the dead soldier sleeps —
Wrapped in his glory;
Where the cold night dew steeps
Faces all gory —
Is thy home there?
are climbing
Over old ruins all moss-grown and
gray-
Where, at the vesper hour, deep bells
a-chiming,
Summon the toil-weary spirit to pray —
Where, as the darkness falls.
Over the gloaming,
Through the dim cloister halls
Pale ghosts are roaming —
Is thy home there?
waves are swelling.
Over the caves of the fathomless deep —
Where, in their coral bowers, Nereids are
knelling
Dirges where beauty and chivalry
sleep —
Where the storm's lurid light.
Fitfully gleaming.
Startles at dead of night,
Men from their dreaming —
Is thy home there ?
are spoken,
In a sweet cottage half hidden by
flowers,
Where the dear household band never is
broken.
Where hope and happiness wing the
glad hours —
From care and strife apart,
Never more roving,
In my adoring heart.
Faithful and loving —
There is thy home.
IF I WERE THE LIGHT OF THE BRIGHTEST STAR.
That burns in the zenith now,
I would tremble down from my home afar,
To kiss thy radiant brow.
If I were the breath of a fragrant flower,
With a viewless wing and free,
I would steal away from the fairest bower,
And live, love, but for thee.
With a moving, melting tone,
I would float from the gay and thoughtless
throng,
And soothe thy soul alone.
If I were a charm, by fairy wrought,
I would bind thee with a sign ;
And never again should a gloomy thought
O'ershadow thy spirit's shrine.
I would linger where thou art ;
If I were a thought of abiding joy,
I would nestle in thy heart.
If I were a hope, with the magic light
That makes the future fair,
I would make thy path on the earth as
bright
As the paths of angels are.
THE FLOWER AND THE STARLIGHT.
That bloomed in a lonely grove,
The starlight came at the twilight hour,
And whispered a tale of love.
Grew warm to its silent core,
And gave out perfume, from its inmost fold,
It never exhaled before.
In the smile of the angel-ray,
And the morn arose with its garish light,
And the soft one stole away.
Where the gentle floweret grew,
But she gave no heed to his- plaintive sigh;
Her heart to its love was true.
To caress the flower in vain ;
She folded her sweets in her thrilling heart
Till the starlight came again.
DIRGE FOR THE OLD YEAR.
Where the winter winds are sighing ;
Toll, toll, toll.
Where the somber clouds are flying ;
Toll, toll, toll,
A deeper, sadder knoll, —
Than sounds for a passing soul, —
Should tell of the Old Year, dying.
Spirits of beauty and light.
Goblins of darkness and night,
From your sunny paths, in the azure sky.
From the Stygian shores, where the shadows lie,
From your co)'al homes, in the ocean caves.
From the frigid north, where the tempest raves,
Come to the pale one dying.
Hark ! to the faUing of phantom feet,
Beat, beat, beat, beat.
Like the solemn sounds, when the surges meet.
On the shores of a mighty river —
They are folding the dead in his winding-sheet.
To bear him away forever.
The fall of a shadowy portal —
And the good Old Year, so true and kind,
Passed to his rest, but left behind
The record of deeds immortal.
IN MY SLEEP I HAD A VISION.
Of a brighter world than this ;
Of a realm, whose vales Elysian,
Wooed the soul to endless bliss.
Hope could sing of nothing fairer
Than this soft, bewitching isle ;
Fancy dreamed of nothing rarer,
And she furled her wings awhile.
Glens and grottos, cool and deep.
Where the shadows of the mountains
Lay on violets, asleep.
It had labyrinths of flowers.
Arching 'neath a summer sky,
And to tread those fairy bowers
There were only thou and I —
Through each shady glen and grove ;
Two enraptured souls a-Maying,
In the Eden-land of love.
Then our hearts forgot the sorrow,
Toil and care of by-gone years,
And the prospect of the morrow
Brought us neither doubts nor fears.
Those bright moments all our own,
Trusting love refused to hearken
To the Sybil's chiding tone.
Joy that would not brook concealing,
From thine eyes like sunlight stole,
And the iris wreath of feeling
Was the cestus of my soul.
Seemed but trite and feeble things,
And I learned thy fond heart's yeai'ning,
By the trembling of its strings.
Never can our -waking senses
Such ecstatic joy receive,
For an hour like this condenses
All the pleasure life can give.
MONT BLANC.
Gleams thy white forehead, bound with purple air.
Thou art coeval with old gray-haired Time,
Yet thy colossal features are as fair
As when the Omniscient set his signet there.
Wrapped in a royal robe, that human art
Could never weave, nor mortal monarch wear,
Thou sitt'st enthroned in majesty apart,
Folding eternal rest and silence in thy heart.
Upon the formless waters; when he hung
New worlds on their mysterious paths, and brought
Light out of brooding darkness; when the young,
Fair earth at his command from chaos sprung
To join the universal jubilee ;
When all the hosts of heaven his triumphs sung,
God left his footsteps on the sounding sea,
And wrote his glorious name, proud monument, on thee :
Hast thou beheld when worlds were wrecked and riven ?
Hast seen wild comets in their red simars
O'er the far fields of space at random driven ?
Seest thou the angels at the gate of heaven ?
Perchance they lend that glory to thy brow,
Which burns and sparkles there this summer even !
Perchance their anthems float around thee now —
They worship God alway, and so, Mont Blanc, dost thou.
The pillars of the earth support thy throne ;
Ages unknown, unnumbered, are thy dower.
Sunlight thy crown, the clouds of heaven thy zone.
Spires, columns, turrets, lofty and alone ;
Snow-fields, where never bird nor beast abode ;
Caverns unmeasured, fastnesses unknown ;
Glaciers where human feet have never trod —
Ye are the visible throne, the dwelling-place of God.
What the duration of our toil and care ?
What are our aspirations, hopes, and fears,
The joys we prize, the ills we needs must bear —
The earthly goals we win, the deeds we dare ?
Our life is but a breath, a smile, a sigh ;
We go, and Time records not that we were ;
But thou will lift thy giant brow on high,
Till Time's last hour is knolled, lost in eternity.
From all the little idols we have wrought ;
Self-love, ambition, wealth, fame, power and pride
Keep silence before thee ; and we are taught
A nobler aim, a more enduring thought.
Our souls are touched by the celestial fire
That glows on holier altars; what we sought
With thought, heart, mind, seems dust, and we aspire
To win some sure good, some guerdon holier, higher.
Pays God the tribute of its prayer and praise ;
Feelings, emotions, passing all control
Ai-e born of thee ; wondering, subdued, we gaze.
Till soul and sense are lost in still amaze,
And the full-gushing heart forgets to beat.
We feel the invisible, we seem to raise
The inner vail, to stand where two worlds meet.
Entranced, bewildered, rapt, adoring at thy feet.
LAKE LEMAN.
When thy starry waves are sleeping,
Sleeping in the fond embraces
Of the summer moon's soft light ;
When thy waters seem to listen
To the blue Rhone, sadly weeping
As she parts from thee forever,
Murmuring tenderly. Good-night !
Nature's radiant evangel,
Lays her cheek upon thy bosom,
With her tresses all undone ;
Like the drapery of an angel,
Are woven into rainbows,
In the pathway of the sun.
Of a quiet summer even
Binds the eastern sky with shadows,
As the day goes doAvn to rest ;
When the gold and crimson curtains,
Looped around the gates of heaven,
And the pathway of the angels
Are painted on thy breast.
Are pictured in thy waters ;
Or when storm-winds from the Jura
Crown thy waves with starry foam ;
And the children of thy valleys,
Helvetia's sons and daughters.
When they leave thee, lake of beauty.
Never find another home.
Of my exile grown so weary
That my soul is sick with sighing,
Waiting, longing to depart ;
And the music of thy voices
Makes me homesick, makes me dreary ;
! I cannot learn to love thee.
While my own land fills my heart.
Sailed on many a storied river,
And brushed the dust of ages
From gray monuments sublime ;
I have seen the grand old pictures
That the world enshrines forever,
And the statues that the masters
Left along the paths of Time.
And my spirit dim with dreaming
Where the long, dead Past has wi-itten
Misty, hieroglyphic lore ;
In a land whose pulses slumber,
Or only beat in seeming.
And the pathway of the Caesars
Is a ruin evermore.
From this Old World, gray and gory,
To the forests and the prairies.
Far beyond thy stormy waves;
To the land that Freedom fostered
To gigantic strength and gloi-y,
To my home-land, with its loved ones.
And its unforgotten graves.
And the dear old trees I planted,
And the common, simple blossoms
That bloomed around my door ;
And the old, familiar home-songs
That my children's voices chanted.
And the few who used to love me.
And my heart will ask no more.
HOPE ON, HOPE EVER.
Be forlorn and lowly,
Thou mayst gain a brighter spot.
Though thy steps move slowly.
Reckless of the rich man's scorn,
On thyself relying,
Strive to win, though lowly born.
Name, renown undying.
In the path that heaven assigned.
Rest thee idly never ;
Work with might and soul and mind.
And hope on, hope ever.
On thy path is shining ;
Let no moment bear away
Murmurs of repining.