Omaha daily bee., 1874-05-05
A NEBRASKA POET IN THE
UNITED STATES SENATE.
Senator Hitchcock makes his
Debut as q Poet.
An Impartial Criticism of lis
mice Rhyming Letter"

Poets and Poetry have ever been
appreciated in all ages and all coun-
lies. Greece had her Homer
seven cities fought for Homer dead,
through which the living Homer
his bread. Although he had
4 hard time of it while living his
was appreciated, and was the
CT making him immortal.
He lives forever in the minds OF
men.
Italy had her poets-Virgil, Hor-
ace, and a host of others. She, too,
like Greece, owes more to her poets
than the poets owe to them. Ger
many had her Goethe and Schiller;
England her Shakespeare, Scott, By
ron, and others who have passed in
their chips; while among the living
she has her Tennyson, the poet
laureate.
America has her Longfellow, her
Bret Harte, her Walt Whitman,
her Joaquin Miller, and others, who
have made and are making a repu-
tation for themselves and their
country. But whom has Nebraska?
She has Phineas w. Hitchcock.
Should the honor of poet laureate
be established i'm the United States
to-day, there would be no lack of
aspirants, and if the people OF
Omaha and Nebraska had a voice
i'm the selection of a poet to swear
the laurel" they would unhesita-
tingly choose Phineas w. Hitchcock.
He is the only man that would
stand any chance of knocking the
chip off Tennyson's shoulder, should
there ever be an information
al poetry writing match.
Well wager a copy of "Mother
Goose's Melodies" that he can do it.
He is a poet of no mean order,
which fact has recently been dis
covered by his admiring constitu-
ents, who read in Sundays Re
publican that beautiful poetical con-
tribution dedicated "TO Oracle
Hitchcock-at School in Germany"
and signed "P. w. H."
Yes, P. w. H. has written a poem.
He has invoked the muse, mounted
his Pegasus, and has made himself
immortal in rhyme.
Senator Hitchcock, like many
! other public men, undoubtedly has
long had an itching to make himself
famous as q poet, and We can I'M
hesitatingly say that his ambition
has at last been gratified.
The poem referred to affords
abundant proof that the Senator is
endowed with a vivid poetical i'm
agination, and that he is but another
evidence of the truth of the Latin
maxim, "Ibeta a~dschur, non it,"
He is born poet, as any n capa-
BILE of judging of the merits of his
"niee rhyming letter." will at once
conclude.
Having struck his attitude as a
poet, and having thrown himself
upon the tender mercies of the jury,
which i'm this case is the reading
public throughout the whole world,
we shall exercise our rights of criti-
cism upon his maiden effort, and
shall endeavor to render an impair
tial verdict i'm his case. We con-
slider ourself perfectly capable OF
criticising his poem, for in our
younger days we also wrote poetry.
We recollert of having composed,
with some considerable effort, a
parody on Excelsior" and "The
Raven" and we once copied a long
forgotten poem, Of some merit, and
palmed it off on Harper's magazine,
as entirely original with US. We
felt as proud of those successful
p~oetical efforts, as does Phineas
w. Hitchcock of his "rhyming let
ter.n
But let us proceed with our task
the criticism of the Senator's
"pome." The first two lines are :
"My dear little Grace, it will make you feel
better,
To get from your papa, a nice ~rbyming letter"
There is much contained i'm these
two lines. They express an affection
which only a father can feel, and
intimate that a "nice rhyming let
ter,"-such as he, of course, is writ
ing-will make the recipient feel
better; that is, better than if she
had received a dry, m~atter-of-faet
prose epistle. No fault can be found
with This beautiful and eXDreSSiye