Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Agnes Sligh Turnbull Poems

Agnes Sligh Turnbull Biography

Agnes Sligh Turnbull (October 14, 1888, New Alexandria, Pennsylvania - January 31, 1982, Livingston, New Jersey) was a bestselling American writer, most noted for her works of historical fiction based in her native Western Pennsylvania. Her parents were Alexander Halliday Sligh, an immigrant from Scotland, and Lucinda Hannah McConnell, also of Scottish descent. She attended the village school, and went on to boarding school before enrolling at the Teachers College at what is now called Indiana University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She also attended the University of Chicago before starting her career as a high school English teacher. In 1918, she married James Lyall Turnbull, just before his departure for Europe during World War I. He returned, and they were married for 40 years and had one child, a daughter named Martha. The family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey in 1922, where she lived for the rest of her life. Turnbull had her first short story published by The American Magazine in 1920, and published further short stories regularly until 1936, when she published her first novel, The Rolling Years. While some critics regarded the morality of her writing as old-fashioned, she and others attributed it to a hopeful outlook on life. She is buried in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania.)

The Best Poem Of Agnes Sligh Turnbull

No Regrets

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends.
I have savoured to the full all the small, daily joys.
The bright sunshine on the breakfast table;
the smell of the air at dusk;
the sound of the clock ticking;
the light rains that start gently after midnight;
the hour when the family come home;
Sunday evening tea before the fire!
I have never missed one moment of beauty,
not ever taken it for granted.
Spring, summer, autumn, or winter.
I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

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