John Jay Chapman Biography
He was born in New York City. His father, Henry Grafton Chapman, was a broker who eventually became president of the New York Stock Exchange. He was educated at Harvard, was admitted to the bar in 1888, and practiced law until 1898. Meanwhile he had attracted attention as an essayist of unusual merit. His work is marked by originality and felicity of expression, and in the opinion of many critics has placed him in the front rank of the American essayists of his day.
He is the subject of an interesting biographical and critical essay by Edmund Wilson in The Triple Thinkers which recounts the reasons behind Chapman's deliberately burning off his own left hand.
THE dreamy earth is flooded o'er
With warm and hazy light,
September's latest boon, before
She feels the hoar frost in the night;
...
O GOD when the heart is warmest,
And the head is clearest,
Give me to act:
To turn the purposes thou formest
...
WHEN from a mighty storm far out at sea
Roll in the glassy and gigantic waves,—
Wreck-laden Tritons, bearing in their arms
...
THE evening wore on with the Judge in the chair
While song after song sought the rafter;
We crowned him with holly to match his white hair
...
THROW open the shutters, it's seven o'clock!
And impertinent crows take their flight at the shock;
...
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