Ten or twelve years of quiet busy life at Columbus, Mississippi constitute the second distinct period in William Ward's comparatively uneventful life. His letters home indicate that many of the sights and incidents connected with life in that almost frontier land were new and startling to the scholarly youth from staid Connecticut. By degrees he became accustomed to his surroundings, and identified himself with the society and business of the place. Modest and reserved in public, with his friends he was ever a genial and interesting companion. More student than mechanic, he would doubtless have preferred a literary career. As it was, his literary tendency continued to assert itself, and before attaining his majority verses from his pen began to appear in print. At twenty or earlier he became a contributor to the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, to which for ten years or more thereafter he continued to furnish poems or themes chiefly classical and patriotic. First in order of time of those that have been preserved is "The Grave of Hale," which appeared in the issue of June 3, 1843. In smooth and vigorous Spenserian stanzas, he protests against the neglect of the martyr-patriot's grave. "Alas! and hath no gentle honoring hand, But that of Nature decked his tomb with flowers, We mourn the heroes of some storied land, And leave a cold and barren grave to ours." Among other published poems of his early period indicative of his devotion to the classic Muse, and of his ardent patriotism, may be named "The Egean," "Greece," "The Bellman of '76," and "Our Own New England." These lines from the first two poems, written respectively in 1844 and 1845, but for the dates might seem to have been inspired by the result of the late sad struggle between the Greeks and Turks: "Bright sea! no more the naiad haunts Thy pearl founts with a syren spell, No sea-nymph on thy foam-bed pants, Within her rainbow spawning cell, The halo of departed years-- Sleeps like a dream upon thy sky, While the dark curse of blood and tears Is echoed back with freedom's sigh." * * * * * "Oh Greece! could ye but boast of Greeks the shame That gathers o'er thee now would make thy altars flame." For the tenderness and warmth of sentiment expressed therein, the poem, "Our Own New England," merits more than simple reference to it. The last stanza shows how thoroughly Southern in ten years he had become. Friendships strong and lasting had been formed, and he was now prominent among the citizens of a town that even then prided itself on its culture. One of the intimate friends of Alexander K. McClung, he has left an appreciative tribute to that powerful, but somber and erratic genius.