P O E M S BY S. C. M E R C E R

LOUISVILLE JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY INCORPORATED 1908

Copyright, 1908, BY S. C. M E R C E R

FOREWORD.

The poems here collected are in the main reprints of pieces that originally appeared in various newspapers and periodicals, beginning with the Louisville Journal in the late ’50s. This newspaper was at that time edited by the brilliant George D. Prentice, my personal friend, who a few years after I had left college offered me the assistant editorship of his paper. The imperative duty which at that time I owed to others forced me to decline this offer, although for many years I wrote editorials and verses for this then powerful and widely read journal. Many of the poems here collected have appeared in the columns of the Louisville daily papers and have been copied in other journals, North and South, and in poetic collections. Others were first printed in the Nashville Press and Times, of which I was editor during my two terms as Public Printer of Tennessee, during the administrations of Military Governor Andrew Johnson and of Governor Brownlow in the days of Reconstruction.

It will be noticed that the partisan poems breathe the spirit of the times in which they were written—the stormy ’60s—but I have not thought it wise to change their tone, they being now only the record of a long-since departed day. There has been some controversy as to the authorship of the poem “The Angel of the Hospital,” owing to a manuscript copy of this poem being found on the body of a young Confederate officer killed in one of the battles in Georgia, and from which the poem was reprinted in many of the Southern newspapers. I had previously, however, printed it in the Louisville Journal, and as newspapers were scarce in the South at that time, the unfortunate youth must have copied the verses before passing the newspaper on to his comrades.

The Author.

Hopkinsville, June 30, 1908.

INDEX

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THE TWO KENTUCKIANS.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN—Fourteenth President of the United States; born in Hardin County, Ky., February 12, 1809; assassinated in Ford’s Theater, April 16, 1865.

JEFFERSON DAVIS—First and last President of the Southern Confederacy; born in Christian County, Ky., June 3, 1808; died in New Orleans, December 6, 1889.

THE HUNTER’S LAST RIDE.

[We rode for hours, the day following, in the track of the fire which had swept the vast prairies as far as the eye could reach with utter desolation, finding on several occasions the charred remains of animals which had perished in the flames, and in one instance those of an unfortunate hunter and his horse.—Brissot’s Western Travels, Vol. II.]

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THE OLD ROCK SPRING.

II.

III.

IV.

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V.

A LYRIC FOR LILIAN.

I Bring Thee a Garland.

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THE STRAWBERRY BOWL

[A private and confidential Epistle to Sam Gaines, Editor of the Hopkinsville New Era. Written for the Kentucky Press Association.]

God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but certainly he never did.—Izaak Walton.

Ye Salutation.

A Walk in the Garden.

Ye Revel on Olympus.

Ye Invocation.

Ye Picnic.

Ye Pioneer’s Wild Strawberries.

Ye Silent Toast.

Ye Small Boy’s Downfall.—A Sam.

Good-night.

HYMN.

[Sung at the Dedication of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Church, Fairview, Kentucky, November 21, 1886.]

Inscription on a marble tablet in the wall of the church:

Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was born June 3, 1808, on the site of this church. He made a gift of the lot March 10, 1886, to the Bethel Baptist Church, as a thank-offering to the Lord.

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JOHN MORGAN AND HIS MEN.

Dedicated to Mrs. Basil Duke.

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