The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1883-04-05
NATIONAL SONG WRITERS.

new 1OrK tribune: Inc writer's OF
national songs have common heritage
of wretehedness, lonelines and neglect.
The noble anthem "God save the King,s
sung with patriotic feYor the world over
wherever Eoglishmen are In a festive
mood, was written in words and music
by an unhappy poet whose life seemed a
signal failure. He was equally unsuc
cessful as q verse writer and as q COM
poser, and his death was adespairing re-
lease from melancholy and dIsappoiHt-
ment as well as from abject poverty
The anthem published in the closing
year of his life attracted little attention,
and nothing was further from his
thoughts in his last hours than the
consciousness that he hal given voice
to the patriotism and loyalty of unborn
generations of Englishmen. HIS name
was speedily forgotten, words and music
| were assigned to an Elizabethan organ
list, and it has not been until a recent
time that musical antiquaries have set-
tied the question of authorship. In
| like manner the Marsei1laise was the
work of a profoundly unhappy man,
whose embiltered life came to
tragic end during the
stormy years of the revolution; and mod
ern critics have denied him the honor
of composing the music to which the
Republican armies marched to their
first victories, and charged him with
stealing his melody from mass and au-
daeiously adapting his wild words to 1t.
1t was in Il garnet Of the same Paris,
where Rouget de Lisle's battle hymn
heated the blood of the poDulace in 1892,
that the most characteristic of AmerI-
can songs was written. John Howard
Payne. having failed as an actor ana an
author IN England as we'll as in his ma
tive country, was starving, despairing
and homeless In strange city, where
| the loneliness of his soul and the home
sick sinking OF has heart found an echo
in There's no place like home.'
New York was Payne's birth place
and the theatre of his maiden triumph
on the stage; Boston was the home ofhis
childhood, and the scene of his earliest
adventure in literature and journalism
Washington was the capital where his
| happiest days were passed and his
merits appreciated by a diplomatic
| appointment from President Tyler;
but his was always a lonely life har-
raised by penury and oppressed with
heartaching and melancholy. In Eng
land and France he led Bohemian ex-
istence, sometimes acting in a theater,
often writing unsuccessful plays and
poems, always struggling in dark wat.
ers. There were few triumphs in his
lite, as when his tragedy of "Brutus"
made profound impression in London,
owing largely to the genius of Edmund
Kean, or when he was honored with
complimentary benefits in New York
and Boston after his first return from
England. Before he died. moreover,
the words which he had written when
faint and sick in Paris had become a
household song throughout England and
America. But his was ut best somber,
sad and wearisome life. The same
ironical fate which had inspired him, 8
homeless man, to write tie worlds
hymn of home pursued him to the end.
He died in Tunis among strangers and
was buried there-homeless to the last.
1t was generous thought that prompt
ed one of the most public spirited citI-
zens Of Washington to send for
the ashes of the neglected singer
buried SO far from his own coun-
try. The simple monument bearing
his name in the cemetery at Tunis was
mainly an English memorial, and 80
was the window in the Protestant
church hard by. II was meet that the
Americans should honor his memory
by reburying the author of "Home.
Sweet Home" somewhere in the land
of his birth. A Tribune correspondent
from Tunis described not long ago the
pathetic scene when Payne's ashes were
tenderly carried into the church after
the silence and neglect of thirty years,
and sweet-voiced American lady sang,
"a charm from the sky seems TO hallow
US there" There was painful lack of
pathos or even of human interest in
yesterdays scene at the City Hall when
those ashes were brought home. But
the mechanical ceremonial of the lying
state and the monument to be erected
in Washington compensate in some
measure for the neglect from which his
memory has suffered.