The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-10-22
A TAM MANY POET.
How the Hon. Amos Cummings Used to
Stir Up the Boys for Greeley.

Stir Up the Boys for Greeley.
In this busy age it frequently happens
that a man in one short life plays SO
many parts that it is sometimes forgot
ten that he served in the army, OF was
governor Carl Schurz is a good exam
pie of the one, and Gen. Butler of the
other. No one nowadays seems to re-
member that ex-senator Schurz was a
major-general, and Massachusetts peo-
pie have pretty well allowed themselves
to forget that Gen. Butler was once their
governor.
The Hon. Amos j. Cummings, of New
York, has had so busy and eventful a ca
reer, in and out of Congress, that his fell
low citizens may well be excused if they
forget that he was once a poet, or that
pamphlet edition of his poems was pub
lished by the New York Sun as long ago
as 1872, and yet SO it was.
The volume was entitled sThe SUMS
Greeley Campaign Songster, by Amos
Cummings and we regret to say that as
a poet Mr.. Cummings was not entirely
original; that here and there his poems
showed only too plainly the source from
which he was then drawing inspiration.
For example, this verse was not built
from an American model:
Hurrah! we've won it gallantly Carl Schurz
has pierced their left;
For Grant has cried for quarter, OF all MS
guards bereft.
The carpet knights are sorely pressed, and rid
ing from the rear;
Full well they know their borrowed plumeS they
y can no longer wear.
The mailed banditti of the South before our
And troops " Of residential kin are fleeing
through the town.
Colfax lies low with Robson, Ben Butler under
meath,
And like an angry grizzly. Fishlicks his wound
Whilst Victory is perching on the Hat of Chap
paqua!
Mr.. Cummings shonld have disguised
his author little more. After Macau-
lay, long way after him." the average
reader of that poem must have OBJ
served.
And yet Mr.. Cummings could be origi-
nal when he tried, and thoroughly Span
ish, capable of writing down to any one
of the people who wanted to read his
poems. For example there is page 1917
this gem:
Now despite all the sneers,
And the 1rowns and the tears
! OF the fearful old blowers who blew 500
| Horace q. viii go up
| And turn out the bull-pup
| With his boss, the modern Crusoe.
| CHoRUs.-O, poor, brainless receiver!
You had better accept a retriever;
For in March, Seventy-three,
| You'll be up a tall tree,
Inquiring the way to Salt Ree-yer !.
There was just suggestion of ito the
victor belong the spoils'' about this
| (page 49) but then the Democrats who
were shouting "Hurrah for Horace
| Greeley DIN him. needed something of
the sort to cheer them on to the polls:
| Come, rally round old Horace, boys,
| He never can be beat;
He'll weed the Office-hOlder out
| And sift them just like wheat.
He works all day upon the farm,
| He puts his produce in the barn;
A farmer wise and great is he
To rule this land of liberty.
And this will go far to show that while
| Mr.. Cummings was then poet, he was
no prophet:
Then raise our Farmers banner high,
And catch the favoring gale;
Inspired with courage, zeal, and hope,
There's no such thing as fail,
| For Victory waits upon our flag
And cheers us on our way.
To sing a Greeley song by night
And beat his foes by day
| These few extracts must be taken as
| specimens of what Mr.. Cummings can
do in the way of verse making. The
| time may come when that little book
will be in demand. Mr.. Cummings may
be the Democratic candidate for Presi-
| dent, and then it would work in well
when the Life and Writings of Hon.
Amos J. Cummings" would be called
| for.
There may sometime be second edi-
ton tit is to be fondly hoped improved)
of Rufus Wilmot Griswold, and then the
poems of Mr.. Cummings would work in
| as filling, if nothing more. If nothing
else comes of them, should Mr.. Cum
mings grow rich as well as great, copies
of his Grealey campaign book would
command almost any price the holder
might choose to ask. 1t will, all things
considered, be well for those who own
copies of that now somewhat rare book
| to hold on to them, for until they COM
| mand premium in the market, they will
serve to recall an almost forgotten, but
still in the main thoroughly American
| poet.