The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

Thus passes life. As heavy age comes on,

The joys of youth—bright beauties of the Spring—

Grow dim and faded, and the long dark night

Of death’s chill winter comes. But as the Spring

Rebuilds the ruined wrecks of Winter’s waste,

And cheers the gloomy earth with joyous light,

So o’er the tomb the star of hope shall rise

And usher in an ever-during day.

There is considerable poetic power here. The picture of the mountain oak, with its dead leaves shattered by the November blasts, and its bare branches uplifted to the dark unpitying heavens, is equal to Thomson. This poem, like the one on Memory, is full of sympathy with nature, and a somber sense of the sorrowful side of human nature.

But a college boy’s feelings have a long range upward and downward. Nobody can have the “blues” more intensely, and nobody can have more fun. We find several comic poems by Garfield in his paper. One of them is a parody on Tennyson’s “Light Brigade,” and served to embalm forever in the traditions of Williams a rascally student prank which the Freshmen played upon their Sophomore enemies. One stanza must suffice for these pages. It was called “The Charge of the Tight Brigade”: