John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

John Gardiner Calkins Brainard Poems

HISPANIA! O, Hispania! once my home —
How hath thy fall degraded every son
...

Though now we are sluggish and lazy on shore,
Yet soon shall we be where the wild waters roar;
...

On the deep is the mariner's danger,
On the deep is the mariner's death;
Who, to fear of the tempest a stranger,
...

O! HOW calm and how beautiful—look at the night!
The planets are wheeling in pathways of light;
...

The lines below are founded on a legend, that is as well authenticated as any superstition of the kind; and as current
...

WHO bleeds in the desert, faint, naked, and torn,
Left lonely to wait for the coming of morn?
...

'Arma virumque cano.'
THE sun looked bright upon the morning tide:
Light played the breeze along the whispering shore,
...

'T IS morning on the sunny sod,
Where lingering footsteps late have trod;
'T is morning on the melting snow,
...

'How slow we drive! — but yet the hour will come,
When friends shall greet me with affection's kiss;
When, seated at my boyhood's happy home,
...

It has a strange wild note — that Mocking-bird,
I've heard him whistle to the passer by,
And scold like any parrot. Now his note
...

THERE is a rude old monument,
Half masonry, half ruin, bent
With sagging weight, as if it meant
To warn one of mischance;
...

THE moon hangs lightly on yon western hill;
And now it gives a parting look, like one
Who sadly leaves the guilty. You and I
...

'Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello.' — Oracle.
I SEEK not the grove where the wood-robins whistle,
...

THOUGH friends are false, and leaders fail,
And rulers quake with fear;
Though tamed the shepherd in the vale,
...

What is there saddening in the Autumn leaves?
Have they that 'green and yellow melancholy'
That the sweet poet spake of?-Had he seen
...

SOLEMN he paced upon that schooner's deck,
And muttered of his hardships: — 'I have been
Where the wild will of Mississippi's tide
...

THERE's beauty in the deep;
The wave is bluer than the sky;
And though the lights shine bright on high,
More softly do the sea-gems glow
...

Sweep on, the wave is curled with foam,
Sweep on, the tide is bearing home,
Sweep on, the breeze is fair;
...

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain,
While I look upward to thee. It wold seem
...

It rains. What lady loves a rainy day?
Not she who puts prunella on her foot,
Zephyrs around her neck, and silken socks
...

John Gardiner Calkins Brainard Biography

John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (1795–1828) was an American lawyer, editor and poet. John Brainard was born in New London, Connecticut in October 1796, son of Jeremiah G. Brainard, formerly a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court. He was a descendant of Lion Gardiner, an early English settler and soldier in the New World, founded the first English settlement in what became the state of New York. His legacy includes Gardiners Island which remains in the family and is the largest privately owned island in the United States. He was tutored at home by an elder brother, and entered Yale College at the age of 15 in 1811. Biographies agree that he was not an attentive student, and it is uncertain if he graduated. Nevertheless on leaving college he was taken on as a student at law in his brother William F. Brainard's office. By 1819 he had been called to the bar and moved to Middletown, apparently to set up his own practice. In fact, he seems to have been apathetic about a legal career, feeling that his nature was too sensitive for such a profession. Some of his earliest poems are from this period of his life, published in a New Haven literary paper, The Microscope published by one Cornelius Tuthill. In February 1822, he was engaged as editor of the Connecticut Mirror in a bid to further a literary career. Again, biographies agree that this was not the ideal job for him, and that "his temperament was totally unsuited to rough collissions of editorial controversy". In this role he published a number of his own works within the newspaper, which were well received and led to a literary reputation for Brainard. He appears to have been well known and well thought of in his community. He is known to have been a friend of McDonald Clarke, the so-called "Mad poet of Broadway". In 1824-5 he published a first volume, Occasional Pieces of Poetry by John G. C. Brainard, being reprints of works first published in the Mirror, together with a miscellany of unpublished poems. By the spring of 1827, he was in failing health, suffering from tuberculosis. He returned to New London, giving up his Mirror role, but continuing to have poems published in it. He died on September 26, 1828. A number of poets, including John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote poems in his memory. A posthumous The literary remains of J.G.C. Brainard: with a sketch of his life was published in 1832, and revised and republished as The poems of John G. C. Brainard. A new and authentic collection. A number of his poems are reprinted in collections of poems.)

The Best Poem Of John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

Ā;Es Alienum

HISPANIA! O, Hispania! once my home —
How hath thy fall degraded every son
Who owns thee for a birth-place. They who walk
Thy marbled courts and holy sanctuaries,
Or tread thy olive groves, and pluck the grapes
That cluster there — or dance the saraband
By moonlight, to some Moorish melody —
Or whistle with the Muleteer, along
Thy goat-climbed rocks and awful precipices;
How do the nations scorn them and deride!
And they who wander where a Spanish tongue
Was never heard, and where a Spanish heart
Had never beat before, how poor, how shunned,
Avoided, undervalued, and debased,
Move they among the foreign multitudes!
Once I was bright to the world's eye, and passed
Among the nobles of my native land
In Spain's armorial bearings, decked and stampt
With Royalty's insignia, and I claimed
And took the station of my high descent;
But the cold world has cut a cantle out
From my escutcheon— and now here I am,
A poor, depreciated pistareen.

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