William Dana Emerson
(1813-1891)
Ohio
William Turner Coggeshall, The Poets and Poetry
of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices 284 (Columbus,
Ohio: Follett, Foster and Company, 1860):
WILLIAM DANA EMERSON is one of the Western
poets who have written chiefly and happily on themes suggested
by local scenery or local history. He was born in the pioneer
town, Marietta, Ohio, on the ninth day of July, 1813. His father
was a lawyer and an editor. William was educated at Ohio University,
where he graduated with distinction in 1836. In one of his poems,
written in 1838, grateful memories of Athens and pleasant recollections
of college life, are recorded. We quote two stanzas:
Sweet Athens! the home of learning and beauty,
How I long for thy hills and thy rich balmy
air;
For thy wide-spreading greens, smiling sweetly on duty,
And the valley beneath, and the stream wending
there!
On the North the high rock, on the South the lone ferry;
The ville on the East, and the mill on the
West,
The lawn where the gravest at play-hours were merry,
And the walks by the footstep of beauty made
bless'd:
The old college building—where Enfield and Stewart
Oft found me ensconced in the cupola cool;
While I glanced now and then, mid the study of true art,
At the names graven there by the pocket edge-tool;
Oh, time has diminished the strength of my spirit,
The visions of youth are my glories no more
But still one estate from thee I inherit,
The old right of way to the stars and their
lore.
After leaving college Mr. Emerson taught school in Kentucky and
in Illinois. School-keeping in Illinois in 1839 was well calculated
to make a young man thoroughly acquainted with the necessary peculiarities
of pioneer life—peculiarities which in several of his poems Mr.
Emerson graphically describes.
Returning to Ohio, Mr. Emerson studied law, and has, for ten
or fifteen years, kept an office in Cincinnati. But he is not
much known at the bar. His disposition is retiring. He shuns society,
and avoids the haunts where men "most do congregate,"—except
when he has occasion to visit a public library, and then, though
the librarian may learn his name, he will find it difficult to
learn aught else respecting him.
We first became acquainted with Mr. Emerson as a poet, through
the Herald of Truth, published by Lewis A. Hine, in Cincinnati,
in 1847 and 1848. Since that time he has not often contributed
to magazines or newspapers; but in 1850 a volume, composed of
his poems, was printed by his brother, George D. Emerson, at Springfield,
Ohio, for private circulation. It was entitled "Occasional Thoughts
in Verse," and is a duodecimo of one hundred and two pages—containing
thirty-nine poems. . . .
Poem
To
the Ohio River
Poetry
William D. Emerson, Occasional Thoughts, in Verse (Springfield,
Ohio: Geo. D. Emerson & Co., 1851) [online text]
_______________, Rhymes of Culture, Movement, and Repose
(Cincinnati: G.E. Stevens & Co., 1874)
Writings
William D. Emerson, History and Incidents of Indian
Corn, and Its Culture (Cincinnati: Wrightson & Co., Printers,
1878)
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