Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

Lloyd McKim Garrison

(1867-1900)


I must report that I know little about Lloyd McKim Garrison. He served, for some period of time as attorney for The Association of the Bar of the City of New York. [See: George Martin, Causes and Conflicts: The Centennial History of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 1870-1970 262 (Fordham University Press, 1997)]

Garrison's father was Wendell Phillips Garrison. [See: Letters and Memorials of Wendell Phillips Garrison, Literary Editor of "The Nation" 1865-1906 (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1908)]

Two Portraits

aniels

A Marshall who had b urned a town
And robbed its galleries for the Corwn;
A Buccaneer who had unfurled
Out in the undiscovered world
His Christian Majesty's flag, and there
Claimed for him half a Hemisphere;
A venal Judge; a Fop o' the Court;
A Bishop of the easier sort,
Each bore away from the Levee
A portrait of His Majesty,
"For our most loyal Subject," where
The Painter, with discretion rare,
Had hinted at the Hapsburg chin,
But put the royal orders in
The scarlet cloak—the powdered queue—
With all the art and skill he knew;
Then framed the flattered, simpering face
In a minutely-jewelled case.
Poor fools, to whom that favor meant
Full meed for lives so basely spent,
Howe very mean it seems when I
(Who nor deserved nor looked so high)
Behold the miniature that She
So graciously accorded me!
A firm white neck and rosy face—
Blue eyes that waver not, but have
A something in them frank and brave,
Which the strong chin and forehead high
Confirm, though mirthful mouth deny—
And hair whose luminous fibres shed
Gold like a nimbus round her head.

Inspired young face! for centuries still
To make beholders stir and thrill,
While Majesty smirks, prim and set,
From some Collector's cabinet.

[Scribner's Magazine, vol.11, no.3, March, 1892, pp. 377-378]


Souvenirs.

Like misers, our usurious memories bring
Their coins each day to greedy reckoning
Grieved, if they miss one as they count their store,
Or find one brass, ong loved as gold before.

[Century Illustrated Magazine, Sept., 1890, Vol. XL., No. 5, p. 703]

Poem

"Montauk Point"

Poetry

Lloyd McKim Garrison, Ballads of Harvard and other Verse (Cambridge; W.H. Wheeler, Printer, 1891)