The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-15
NAsCITUR NON FIT.
The Story of How One Great Poem was
Written.

The Story of How One Great Poem was
Written.
Central Advocate.
There are those who regard poets as they
neighbor of this sort, a farmer. soon after
the death of the poet, a man, meeting the
farmer, said to him, you have met with a
great loss" What loss?" "Why, YOU have
lost a great poet" "Oh, ave." replied the
farmer, rubbing his head, The is dead; but /
hev no doubt Z wife'u carry on the business
and make it as profitable as liver it was"
Others derive their notion of a poet and
his method of writing from Shakespeare:
1.-THE poets eye, in a fine frenzy rolling.
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth
to heaven;
And, as Imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poets pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name"
Perhaps a true idea of a certain class of
poets and their habits of composition may
be gained from several anecdotes of James
6. G.. Br&T ard, a young poet of much prom
Use who died in Connecticut in 1928.
One day, a young man, a poet about TWEEN
ty-six years of age, came to Hartford to take
charge of the Connecticut Mirror. To a gem
tlenIan vino made a complimentary allusion
to his poems, he remarked, with a melan-
choly smile.
Don't expect too much of me; 1 never
succeeded in anything yet. 1 never could
draw a mug of cider without splitting half
of it."
The two, in spite of this Interpretations
it was prophetic of his life-on the part of
Brainard, for he was the new editor, became
intimate friends. They roomed together at
the tavern. One Friday night found Brain
ard without a line written for his weekly
sheet, which was to appear next morning.
He had put off writing-a bad habit into
which not a few literary men fall-until the
last moment
Going to his office, accom- panied by his
friend, he began, in a half comic and half
serious way, to compare his condition with
that of a slave. He had set forth the slave
as happier than the editor, when the door
opened. and the printers boy called out:
Copy, Mr.. Brainard.h
Come in fifteen minutesl'' said the editor,
with a droll expression of fun and despair on
his face. Seating himself at a pine table,
hacked by the Yankee whittlers who had
dropped in to see the editor, he took up a
pen and began writing. He wrote twenty
minutes, and then read to his friend the fol-
lowing:
THE FALLS OF
"The thoughts are strange that crowd into my
While / look upward to thee. II would seem
AS if God poured thee from His hollow hand
And hung His bow npon thy awful front;
And spoke in that loud voice that seemed to
him
Who dwell in Patmos for His savior's sake,
The sound OF many waters and had bade
Thy food to chronicle the ages back,
And notch His CENTRES in the eternal rocks!"
Just then the boy opened the door, with
his Copy. STRIP and Brainard, handing him
the lines, told him to come back in half an
hour. Before the time had elapsed, he had
finished and read to his friend the following
stanZa:
"Deep caleth unto deep. And what are we,
That hear the question of that voice sublime2
Oh, what are all the notes that ever rung
From wars vain trumpet by thy laundering
side2
Yea, what is all the riot man can make,
In his short life, to thy unceasing roar2
And yet, bold babbler, what art those to Him
Who drOwn'd a world and heap'd the water far
Above its Hottest mountains2 A light wave
That breathes and whispers of its Makers
might"
The poet left the Office, u~neoncious that he
had written the most beautiful and suggest
i've lines ever penned upon Niagara. The
strangest thing about the stanzas is not the
rapidity with which they had been composed
and written, but that Brainard had never
seen the falls he so grandly describes.