July Poems: The Irreverent and the Patriotic

-

  


Because poetry was so common in the newspaper in the decades before World War II, I come across a lot of poetry while digging around in the past. My favorite are the poems that were written to address current events and issues, like poems on the controversial Mother Hubbard dress, or poems written in support of “drummers” - salesmen - when a drummer convention was in town. They are buried in the past but too good not to share! So I am kicking off a new monthly feature, the poems of the month. (Poems, plural, because I can’t pick just one!)

      Of course we have to start with Independence Day. The Fourth of July was often called the “Glorious Fourth” in the 1800s. It was celebrated in ways still familiar, with fireworks, picnics and games like potato sack races. The fireworks were rarely municipal displays, but the sort of thing people set off in their backyards. 

     What is not so familiar to us today are the formal programs so many Victorians sat through before the potato sack races and greased pig contests began. There were declamations performed - famous speeches, with proper elocution and gestures, followed by a patriotic original speech by one or two community leaders, the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and often poetry recitals, prayer and song.  

     Newspapers ran plenty of patriotic poetry year ‘round. So when I began reading the first poem I chose below, I expected it to be that sort of boilerplate. It isn't!


“Glorious Fourth” 1 July 1887, Kiowa County Signal (Greensburg, Kansas), p. 5.


By Samuel Walter Foss 


The Glorious Fourth has come!

Beat the loud resounding drum,

Shoot the cracker, fire the pistol,

Punch the eagle, make him scream

Day of powder and torpedoes,

Lemonade that knows no lemon,

Gingerpop devoid of ginger,

Ice cream innocent of cream!


The Glorious Fourth has come!

Beat the patriotic drum!

Tune the fife and blow the bugle,

Shoot the rocket through the spheres;

Let the rapid-mouthed declaimer

Pour his patriotic passion

Eloquence divorced from meaning

Words unmarried to ideas!


The Glorious Fourth has come!

Pound the hollow-sounding drum!

Hear the speaker spout his geysers,

Hurl his cataracts of speech;

Hear the eloquence compounded

Of unmixable ingredients,

One percent of thought original.


The Glorious Fourth has come!

Beat the deep resounding drum,

Scorch your fingers, burn your whiskers,

Shoot a large hole through your head

Fire your cannon, shoot your arm off

Break your leg and save your country –

Then be carried home to bed!


Samuel Walter Foss (1858-1911) was best known for his poem “The House By the Side of the Road.” It was one of the most famous and beloved poems of its time. Foss was known as the “poet of the common man.” A New Hampshire native and graduate of Brown University, he worked as a public librarian. He wrote a poem a day for the newspapers, which were collected in five volumes. 


“Fourth of July,” The Kansas Chief (Troy, Kansas), 2 July 1891, p. 4.


Ten little fingers, toying with a mine –

Bang! Went the powder, and then there are nine.


Nine little fingers, fixing rockets straight,

Zip! A kick backward, and then there were eight.


     Of course this continued down to no fingers. I was surprised at these poems making light of the dangers of, and injuries caused by, fireworks. I found other poems and short stories that also did so.


A Fourth Epitaph (same paper)


One more unfortunate,

Yearning for fun,

Rashly importunate,

Touched off a gun. 


     The next three samples of poems are typical of the patriotic fare so beloved in the late nineteenth century. 


“Hail Our Country’s Natal Morn,” The Howard Courant (Howard, Kansas), 2 July 1886, p. 1.


Hail our country’s natal morn!

Hail our spreading kindred born,

Hail thou banner, not yet torn

Waving o’er the free!

While this day, in festal throng

Millions swell the patriotic song

Shall not we thy notes prolong,

Hallowed Jubilee!


“Our Flag Is There” (same paper)


Our flag is there! Our flag is there!

We’ll hail it with three loud huzzas!

Our flag is there! Our flag is there!

Behold the glorious stripes and stars!

Stout hearts have fought for that bright flag,

Strong hand sustained its masthead high

and oh! To see how proud it waves!

Brings tears of joy in every eye!


Chorus: 


Our flag is there! Our flag is there!

We’ll hail it with three loud huzzas!

Our flag is there! Our flag is there!

Behold the glorious stripes and stars!


“Ode to our Fourth of July!” The Burlington Patriot (Burlington, Kansas), 4 July 1865, p. 1


By R.E. LaFetra, written for the Kansas Patriot


Again our glorious Fourth is here,

Our nation’s welcome day,

Our cannons roar, our banner’s wave,

Our bands of music play,

All hail glad day, all glorious day,

The day of Freedom’s birth,

We’ll let our glad huzzas ring out

And fill the big round earth.


     There were five more stanzas, with a brief note at the end that said it was written in Burlington, Kansas. R.E. La Fetra was an officer in the Patrons of Husbandry (the Grange)  in Coffey County. In the 1870s he ran a stagecoach line from Burlington, Kansas to Eureka, Kansas. 


Sources:


    “Sam Walter Foss Writes the Ultimate Poem for the Common Man,” New England Historical Society blog, 2014, ewenglandhistoricalsociety.com/sam-walter-foss-writes-ultimate-poem-common-man/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dearing, Kansas

-
     When I was fourteen and asked my grandmother what she knew about our family history, she had her older sister Vera write down what she knew. When I read through Aunt Vera’s one-page paper I saw Dearing, Kansas listed as their mother’s birthplace. This was long before there was an internet to turn to for more information, but even now, Dearing doesn’t have much of a presence on the internet. I’ve since learned it is not actually Melissa J. Patchett’s birthplace. She was born on a farm in Fawn Creek Township, Montgomery County in December 1876. Dearing did not yet exist. Later, it was the closest hamlet near her father’s homesteaded farm and became the place to say she was “from.”  Beginnings      Montgomery County was Osage Country. It was opened to white settlement in 1870 after the Osage were forced off their land in 1869. It is located in Southeast Kansas and borders Oklahoma, which was then the I.T. - Indian Territory. Deari...
Read more

Nothing But An Old Maid

-
Image
     English author Eliza Lynn Linton was harshly critical of women's rights and independent single women. Ironically, she supported herself as an independent, single woman most of her life -- and looked like the stereotype of the old maid.  It was a dreaded fate for a woman. Old maid. Short of being a “fallen woman,” it was the worst fate that could befall her. They were pitied and reviled. She was a “tragedy,” a “leftover,” a “public and private nuisance,” “a failure of womanhood,” an object of derision, scorn, and ridicule. “Superfluous; “redundant, pathetic.”      “What girl can hear this opprobrious title in connection with herself and not feel an instinctive shudder and an involuntary shrinking from the very name?” asked a writer in the Bolivar, Missouri newspaper in 1867. “Old Maid; how fraught with meaning those two monosyllables; and yet how often we hear it fall in tones of derision from both sexes, “oh, she’s nothing but an ol...
Read more

Wedding Gift Must-Haves of the 1870s and '80s

-
Image
                                      Pickle castors seemed to be the must-have wedding gift. If you were a middle-class Protestant couple getting married in the 1870s and ‘80s, there were three nearly certain things: you were marrying at the bride’s parents’ home; everyone would sit down to a dinner cooked by your mother, and you were getting at least one pickle castor as a gift. Most likely, you were getting four or five.       What was a pickle castor? What were other typical gifts? Long lists of gifts accompanied many wedding announcements in the newspapers, giving us a glimpse into what was valued by middle and upper-class folk. It was common to state that the gifts were “numerous and costly,” or “useful and costly.” Useful was in the eye of the beholder - or the time period, as the majority of gifts were t...
Read more