Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

David Barker

(1816-1874)
Maine



frontispiece

David Barker, Poems (Bangor, Maine:
O. F. Knowles & Co., Printers, 1886)

"This well-known poet was born in Exeter, Sept. 9, 1816, and died at the house of his brother, Mark Barker, Esq., in Bangor, Sept. 14, 1874, at the age of fifty-eight years. In early life he devoted himself to a course of self-education, and, by a thorough and arduous research, acquired what was then considered a superior education. Such proficiency did he make in the excellent Academy at Foxcroft that, after a time, he was employed in it as an assistant. After leaving Foxcroft he became a very popular teacher at Eastport and elsewhere, and later, as a law student, entered the office of the Hon. Samuel Cony, at Exeter. Mr. Barker was in successful practice in his native town until within two or three years before his death. . . . An elegant volume of his poems, with a biographical sketch by the Hon. John E. Godfrey, and which has passed through several editions, has been printed at Bangor. Mr. Barker's poetical fame brought to him the degree of A.M. from Bowdoin College . . . ."

[George Bancroft Griffith (ed.), The Poets of Maine 197 (Portland, Maine: Elwell, Pickard & Co., 1888)]

Poem

You Thousand of Men

Poetry

David Barker, Poems (Bangor, Maine: Press of Samuel S. Smith & Son, 1876)(historical sketch by Hon. John E. Godfrey)(Bangor, Maine: O. F. Knowles & Co., Printers, 1886)(Augusta, Maine: E. E. Knowles, 1891) [1876 edition: online text] [online text]

Law Poetry Anthologies

David Barker, "The Six Fellows," in Ina Russelle Warren (ed.), The Lawyer's Alcove: Poems by the Lawyer, for the Lawyer and about the Lawyer 173-175 (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1900)(Buffalo, New York: William S. Hein & Co., 1990)