Edmund Clarence Stedman

Edmund Clarence Stedman Poems

Edmund Clarence Stedman Biography

Edmund Clarence Stedman (October 8, 1833 - January 18, 1908), American poet, critic, and essayist was born at Hartford, Connecticut, United States. He studied two years at Yale University; became a journalist in New York City, especially on the staffs of the Tribune and World, for which latter paper he served as field correspondent during the first years of the Civil War. As opportunity offered, he studied law and was for a time private secretary to Attorney-General Bates at Washington, and was a member of the New York Stock Exchange in Wall Street from 1865 to 1900. His first book, Poems, Lyrical and Idyllic, appeared in 1860, followed by successive volumes of similar character, and by collected editions of his verse in 1873, 1884 and 1897. His longer poems are Alice of Monmouth: an Idyl of the Great War (1864); The Blameless Prince (1869), an allegory of good deeds, supposed to have been remotely suggested by the life of Prince Albert; and an elaborate commemorative ode on Nathaniel Hawthorne, read before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1877. An idyllic atmosphere is the prevalent characteristic of his longer pieces, while the lyric tone is never absent from his songs, ballads and poems of reflection or fancy. As an editor he put forth a volume of Cameos from Walter Savage Landor (with Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1874); a large Library of (selections from) American Literature (with Ellen M Hutchinson, 11 vols, 1888-1890); a Victorian Anthology (1895); and an American Anthology, 1787-1899 (1900); the two last-named volumes being ancillary to a detailed and comprehensive critical study in prose of the whole body of English poetry from 1837, and of American poetry of the 19th century. This study appeared in separate chapters in Scribner's Monthly now the Century Magazine, and was reissued, with enlargements, in the volumes entitled Victorian Poets (1875; continued to the Jubilee year in the edition of 1887) and Poets of America (1885), the two works forming the most symmetrical body of literary criticism yet published in the United States. Their value is increased by the treatise on The Nature and Elements of Poetry (Boston, 1892) a work of great critical insight as well as technical knowledge. Stedman edited, with Ellen M. Hutchinson, A Library of American Literature (eleven volumes, 1888-90); and, with George E. Woodberry, the Works of Edgar Allan Poe (ten volumes, 1895). After the death of James Russell Lowell, Stedman had perhaps the leading place among American poets and critics. In 1904, Edmund Clarence Stedman was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)

The Best Poem Of Edmund Clarence Stedman

Pan In Wall Street

JUST where the Treasury's marble front
Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations;
Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
To throng for trade and last quotations;
Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold
Outrival, in the ears of people,
The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled
From Trinity's undaunted steeple,--

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain
Sound high above the modern clamor,
Above the cries of greed and gain,
The curbstone war, the auction's hammer;
And swift, on Music's misty ways,
It led, from all this strife for millions,
To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days
Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,
And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,
I saw the minstrel, where he stood
At ease, against a Doric pillar:
One hand a droning organ played,
The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned
Like those of old) to lips that made
The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

'T was Pan himself had wandered here
A-strolling through this sordid city,
And piping to the civic ear
The prelude of some pastoral ditty!
The demigod had crossed the seas,--
From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,
And Syracusan times,--to these
Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head;
But--hidden thus--there was no doubting
That, all with crispy locks o'erspread,
His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting;
His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,
Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them,
And trousers, patched of divers hues,
Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,
And with his goat's-eyes looked around
Where'er the passing current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills
&nbps;The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,
Even now the tradesmen from their tills,
With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

The bulls and bears together drew
From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley,
As erst, if pastorals be true,
Came beasts from every wooded valley;
The random passers stayed to list,--
A boxer Aegon, rough and merry,
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst
With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long
In tattered cloak of army pattern,
And Galatea joined the throng,--
A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
While old Silenus staggered out
From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,
And bade the piper, with a shout,
To strike up 'Yankee Doodle Dandy!'

A newsboy and a peanut-girl
Like little Fauns began to caper:
His hair was all in tangled curl,
Her tawny legs were bare and taper;
And still the gathering larger grew,
And gave its pence and crowded nigher,
While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew
His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.

O heart of Nature, beating still
With throbs her vernal passion taught her,--
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,
Or by the Arethusan water!
New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,
But Music waves eternal wands,--
Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I,--but among us trod
A man in blue, with legal baton,
And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
And pushed him from the step I sat on.
Doubting I mused upon the cry,
'Great Pan is dead!'--and all the people
Went on their ways:--and clear and high
The quarter sounded from the steeple.

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