Poems (Elliott)

by Martha Julia Elliott

For works with similar titles, see Poems.

Poems

BY

MARTHA JULIA ELLIOTT

 

"Be no longer a chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name!"—Carlyle.

 

THE CAYUGA PRESS
ITHACA, N. Y.
1917

TO
MY MOTHER,
MY INSPIRATION
AND
MY CRITIC,
TO WHOSE FAITH IN ME
I OWE WHAT LITTLE THERE
MAY BE OF MERIT IN THESE
VERSES OF MY CHILDHOOD.

Copyright 1917
by
Martha Julia Elliott

Introduction

MARTHA JULIA ELLIOTT was born in Yonkers, N. Y., July 26, 1899. She is the daughter of E. Leavenworth Elliott, Cornell 1887, and of Carrie Enz Elliott, Vassar 1891. The Hon. Frank J. Enz, of Ithaca, was her grandfather.

She has been educated in the Ithaca schools, with the exception of three years spent in study at Chappaqua Mountain Institute, a Quaker School, reflecting the old Concord traditions of "simple living and high thinking," under the able directorship of Mr. Charles R. Blenis, at Valhalla, N. Y.

She is a member of Lambda Chapter of the Mu Phi Epsilon Sorority of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music.

She will enter Cornell University, in September, 1917, in the course in Arts and Sciences.

This little girl, who took her first step in life on the first day of the new century, under the guidance of Miss Emily G. Marsh, a warm friend of the family, very early showed an aptitude for poetic expression. In fact, before she had learned to read or write, she began to commune with herself at times, in a recitative full of imaginative thought, much of which has been lost.

Her mother, however, when she found this becoming more frequent, as time passed, kept pad and pencil at hand, lest the vagrant thoughts be scattered, like the leaves of the Cumaean Sybil, and has preserved enough of her child's work to afford material of some value to those interested in the psychological development of children.

In the present volume, poems have been selected, written at an interval of two years, beginning with the first, at the age of four, and ending with the "Victuri Salutamus," written in response to her unanimous election by her comrades to the honor of Class Poet.

Her earliest expressions of poetic thought might perhaps come under the head of "Free Verse," having a certain rhythm, but without rhyme. Then follows one prose poem. The first rhyming verse is the one called "A Child's Faith," written at the age of four. From then on "free verse" seems to have been discarded.

This little volume is published at the present time, and before the Author's eighteenth birthday, as a souvenir, to be presented to a few appreciative friends, on her graduation from the Ithaca High School in June, 1917. Owing to the timeliness of the subject, her graduating essay, "Three Hero-Poets," has also been included. Thanks are due to the Ithaca Journal and to the Ithaca High School Tattler for permission to reprint the poems which have already appeared in those publications.

C. E. E.

Ithaca, June, 1917.

Table of Contents (not listed in original)

• Thoughts
• A Child's Faith
• Evening
• In Sleepytown
• Beauty
• Hidigeigei
• Morning
• Midsummer Magic
• A Summer Night
• A Modern Valentine
• Her Answer
• The Winged Fate
• The Battle Hymn of the I. H. S.
• A Spring Madrigal
• A Plea to Delinquent Subscribers
• Ending to "Gareth and Lynette"
• "Success Means Sacrifice"
• Hallowe'en
• Knights
• Thanksgiving
• Faculty 8—Seniors 2
• The "Up to the Minute" Girl
• A Christmas Thought
• To the Boys
• A Parenthetical Romance
• Prohibition
• March
• Mu Phi Epsilon Song
• Saint Patrick
• The Divine Tragedy
• Easter Morning
• Spring
• Resurgam
• To My Pony
• War
• Futurity
• The Call On Arms
• Class Song of 1917—I. H. S.
• Victuri Salutamus
• Three Hero-Poets