JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
POET AND SCIENTIST.
URING the past forty years Indiana has been prolific in producing prominent men. General Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, Joaquin Miller and Maurice Thompson are among the prominent men of letters who are natives of the “Hoosier State.”
Maurice Thompson is claimed as belonging to both the North and South, and his record, perhaps, justifies this double claim. He was born at Fairfield, Indiana, September 9th, 1844, but his parents removed to Kentucky during his childhood and subsequently to Northern Georgia. He grew up in the latter state, and was so thoroughly Southern in sentiment that he enlisted and fought in the Confederate Army. At the end of the war, however, he returned to Indiana, where he engaged with a Railway Surveying Party in which he proved himself so efficient that he was raised from a subordinate to the head position in that work, which he followed for some years. After a course of study in law, he began his practice in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the same town in which General Lew Wallace lived. It was from this section that he was elected to the legislature in 1879.
Maurice Thompson is not only a man of letters, but is a scientist of considerable ability. In 1885, he was appointed chief of the State Geological Survey. He was also a Naturalist devoting much attention to ornithology. Many of his poems and most delightful prose sketches are descriptive of bird life.
Mr. Thompson has traveled much in the United States, and his writings in various periodicals as well as his books have attracted wide attention for their original observation and extensive information while they are excelled by few modern writers for poetic richness and diction.
The first book published by this author was entitled “Hoosier Mosaics” which appeared in 1875. Since then he has issued quite a number of volumes among which are “The Witchery of Archey;” “The Tallahassee Girl;” “His Second Campaign;” “Songs of Fair Weather;” “At Loves Extremes;” “By Ways and Bird Notes;” “The Boy’s Book of Sports;” “A Banker of Bankersville;” “Sylvan Secrets;” “The Story of Louisiana;” “A Fortnight of Folly.”
In 1890 Mr. Thompson published “Bankers of Boonville” and the same year became a staff writer for the New York Independent.
CERES.[¹]
(THE GODDESS OF GRAIN.)
HE wheat was flowing ankle-deep
Across the field from side to side;
And dipping in the emerald waves,
The swallows flew in circles wide.
The sun, a moment flaring red,
Shot level rays athwart the world,
Then quenched his fire behind the hills,
With rosy vapors o’er him curled.
A sweet, insinuating calm,—
A calm just one remove from sleep,
Such as a tranquil watcher feels,
Seeing mild stars at midnight sweep
Through splendid purple deeps, and swing
Their old, ripe clusters down the west
To where, on undiscovered hills,
The gods have gathered them to rest,—
A calm like that hung over all
The dusky groves, and, filtered through
The thorny hedges, touched the wheat
Till every blade was bright with dew.
Was it a dream? We call things dreams
When we must needs do so, or own
Belief in old, exploded myths,
Whose very smoke has long since flown.
Was it a dream? Mine own eyes saw,
And Ceres came across the wheat
That, like bright water, dimpled round
The golden sandals of her feet.
[¹] By permission of “Houghton, Mifflin & Co.”
DIANA.[¹]
(THE GODDESS OF THE CHASE.)
HE had a bow of yellow horn
Like the old moon at early morn.
She had three arrows strong and good,
Steel set in feathered cornel wood.
Like purest pearl her left breast shone
Above her kirtle’s emerald zone;
Her right was bound in silk well-knit,
Lest her bow-string should sever it.
Ripe lips she had, and clear gray eyes,
And hair pure gold blown hoyden-wise.
Across her face like shining mist
That with dawn’s flush is faintly kissed.
Her limbs! how matched and round and fine!
How free like song! how strong like wine!
And, timed to music wild and sweet,
How swift her silver-sandalled feet!
Single of heart and strong of hand,
Wind-like she wandered through the land.
No man (or king or lord or churl)
Dared whisper love to that fair girl.
And woe to him who came upon
Her nude, at bath, like Acteon!
So dire his fate, that one who heard
The flutter of a bathing bird,
What time he crossed a breezy wood,
Felt sudden quickening of his blood;
Cast one swift look, then ran away
Far through the green, thick groves of May;
Afeard, lest down the wind of spring
He’d hear an arrow whispering!
[¹] By permission of “Houghton, Mifflin & Co.”
