Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions — Volume 2Thompson, Slason
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Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions — Volume 2
Thompson, Slason
Field, Eugene, 1850-1895; Journalists -- United States -- Biography; Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography
Thy song the weary heart beguiles;
Like generous wine it soothes and cheers,
Yet oftentimes, amid our smiles,
Thy pathos melts a soul to tears.
3.
In "Casey's Tabble-Dote" no more
Thy kindly humor will be heard;
In silence now we must deplore
The horrors of that "small hot bird."
4.
The "Restauraw" is silent now,
The "Conversazzhyony's" over;
And "Red Hoss Mountain's" gloomy brow
Looks down where lies "Three-fingered Hoover."
5.
Our friend "Perfesser Vere de Blaw"
No longer on the "Steenway" prances
With "Mizzer-Reery" "Opry-Boof,"
And old familiar songs and dances.
6.
Old "Red floss Mountain's" wrapped in gloom,
And "Silas Pettibone's shef-doover"
Has long since vanished from the room
With "Casey" and "Three-fingered Hoover."
7.
Yet will they live! Though Field depart;
Thousands his memory will cherish;
The gentle poet of the heart
Shall live till life and language perish.
C.S.T._
The initials are those of Mr. Charles S. Todd, of Texarkana, Texas; and
the poem, besides testifying to the wide-spread sorrow over Field's
death, bears witness to the fact that his western dialect verse had a
hold on the popular heart only second to his lullabies and poems of
childhood.
From the Fourth Presbyterian Church Field's body was borne to its last
resting-place, in Graceland cemetery. It is a quiet spot where the poet
is interred, in a lovely little glade, away from the sorrowful
processions of the main driveways. Leafy branches wave above his grave,
shielding it from the glare of the sun in summer and the rude sweep of
the winds in winter. The birds flit across it from tree to tree,
casting "strange, flutterin' shadders" over the grave of him who loved
them so well. And there, one day in the early summer, another
bird-lover, Edward B. Clark, heard a wood-thrush, the sweetest of
American songsters, singing its vesper hymn, and was moved out of his
wont himself to sing:
_THE TRIBUTE OF THE THRUSH
A bird voice comes from the maple
Across the green of the sod,
Breaking the silence of evening
That rests on this "acre of God."
'Tis the note of the bird of the woodland,
Of thickets and sunless retreats;
Yet the plashing of sunlit waters
Is the sound of the song it repeats.
Why sing you here in the open,
O gold-tongued bird of the shade;
What spirit moves you to echo
This hymn from the angels strayed?
And then as the shadows lengthened,
The thrush made its answer clear:
"There was void in the world of music,
A singer lies voiceless here."_
Thus endeth this inadequate study of my gentle and joyous friend, "the
good knight, _sans peur et sans monnaie_."
APPENDIX
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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