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Poetic Tributes to Sarah Orne Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett, Ann Struthers
To S.O.J. Invitation to a walk,
Edith M. Thomas
Godspeed, John Greenleaf Whittier
A Tribute
To Sarah Orne Jewett, Emily Hanson
Obear
Ann
Struthers
In the country of the pointed firs
Sarah Orne Jewett was taught to eat cake
while wearing white gloves. She didn't like boys;
her sisters' sharp elbows nudged her at parties
when she stared at pretty girls.
She listened to Grandmothers' stories,
to the lame scrub woman's life, harsh as lye soap,
to the egg lady, shoulders humped like a chicken's,
to Granny Smith who kept a vegetable patch,
spoke poverty and lived granite.
She wrote their lives every morning at her desk
in the wide upstairs hall overlooking the secret woods.
With her first royalties
bought a fast thoroughbred named Sheila,
galloped across the fields, whipping the air.
After thirty, took up with Annie Fields.
The neighbors said they had a "Boston marriage."
Her ice skates hung above the green mantle
in her stark bedroom
except in winter when she engraved the pond
with their sharp blades, a lantern fastened
to her left wrist for night skating.
Her sisters watched her
from the great windows of the house
writing bold yellow sentences on the dark.
This poem appeared originally in The American Scholar
and was collected in The Alcott Family Arrives (1993). To see more
of Struthers's work, you can visit the web
site on The Alcott Family Arrives or Amazon.com. The first photo
above is of Sarah Orne Jewett, the second and third below are of Annie
Adams Fields and of Jewett. The first two are from Elizabeth Silverthorne,
Sarah
Orne Jewett; the last from Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett.
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Invitation to a walk.
Edith M. Thomas (1854-1925)
I've a budding plan that shows
All the color of the rose:
On some morning you will name,
You break house, and I'll the same,
(In such craft we're skilled profoundly!)
Leave our bodies sleeping soundly,
Thence abroad, all spirit, fare,
Lighter than the breathing air.
Quickly mount the ether way:
Only have a care, I pray,
That you be not caught amain
In some wild dream's comet-train!
Since your journey lies due west,
When your spirit's feet you'd rest,
At your pleasure you can float
In the old moon's cockle-boat.
Meanwhile, I must take my way
Toward the gleaming of the day.
When we meet, as meet we will,
Then we'll foot it, light and still,
Wheresoe'er the fancy please:
On the blossoming chestnut-trees,
Starting perfume, as we go;
Or upon some river's flow,
Trip it as the naiads do.
Yonder, sleeping, misty-blue,
Lies my lake, and evermore
Softly kisses the brown shore, -
We might loiter there awhile.
Or we'll flit to your Marsh Isle!
When we've breathed the late-mown grass,
Up an orchard slope we'll pass;
Golden pippins hanging low, -
If we take some, who will know?
. . . Ah, sweet Doris! what if we
At her window try a glee?
Singing, "Doris, sweetheart, wake,
And the dark its flight shall take!"
Thus I plan: do you agree
You will come half-way to me?
On some morning you will name,
You break house, - I'll do the same!
This poem to Sarah Orne Jewett appeared in The Atlantic
in December 1885, pp. 805-6. Thomas refers specifically to two works of
Jewett, "The Confession of a House-Breaker" - which appears in The Mate
of the Daylight (1883) - and A Marsh Island (1885).
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John Greenleaf Whittier
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
Whose prayer availeth much,
my wish should be
Your favoring trade-wind and
consenting sea.
By sail or steed was never love outrun,
And, here, or there, love follows her in whom
All graces and sweet charities
unite,
The old Greek beauty set in
holier light;
And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
Calling up blossoms where her
light feet stray.
God keep you both, make beautiful
your way,
Comfort, console, bless; safely bring,
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.
Whittier wrote this sonnet for the recently widowed Annie
Fields and her new friend Sarah Orne Jewett as the pair departed for Jewett's
first trip to Europe in May of 1882. The text is from Whittier's Complete
Poetical Works (1894). "Her in whom all graces and sweet charities
unite" is generally agreed to be Fields, while "her for whom New England's
byways bloom" is Jewett.
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If I could look as she looks,
I wouldn't be bothered with books.
If I could write as she writes,
My looks wouldn't vex me o' nights.
But to write as she writes,
And look as she looks,
And charm as she charms --
Who is there can do it,
Save only Miss Jewett?
This tribute appeared in Life Magazine, April
6, 1899. It is quoted in Elizabeth Silverthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett:
A Writer's Life (183) and in Weber & Weber, A Bibliography of
the Published Writings of Sarah Orne Jewett (65).
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To Sarah Orne Jewett
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by Emily Hanson Obear (of New York and Calais)
You knew so well the heart of our loved state,
That every man and woman in your books
Is neighbor to our heart. You knew the nooks
Where hide the poor and lonely, -- those who late
Had farm and weir and stoop and ruled their fate.
You knew the windings of the trout-filled brooks;
You knew how measureless the ocean looks
To eyes that scan the storm and tensely wait
Their men-folk at the close of day. How dear
To us who love our country of the pine
Your isles, your gardens, and your wind-swept shore.
We read your sun-shot lines, and home seems near.
Your words make hearths in all our households shine
with pride for tasks and dreams our fathers bore.
This sonnet appeared in the Lewiston Journal Magazine
Section, Lewiston, Maine, Saturday, February 6, 1943, p. 1. The
Journal -- which presumably holds the copyright -- has not responded
to a request to reprint this poem. The text is available courtesy
of Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, ME.
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