“The Old Oaken Bucket,”—Samuel Woodworth.
Samuel Woodworth, a noted American poet and journalist, was born at Scituate, Mass., January 13, 1785, and died in New York City, December 9, 1842. His poem, “The Old Oaken Bucket,” won for him great fame.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead—
The picket’s off duty forever.
“All quiet along the Potomac,”—Ethel L. Beers.
Ethel Lynn Beers, a well-known American poet, was born in Goshen, N. Y., January 13, 1827, and died in Orange, N. J., October 10, 1879. She is the author of “All Quiet Along the Potomac, and Other Poems.”
Oh, meet is the reverence unto Bacchus paid!
We will praise him still in the songs of our fatherland,
We will pour the sacred wine, the chargers lade,
And the victim kid shall unresisting stand,
Led by his horns to the altar, where we turn
The hazel spits while the dripping entrails burn.
“Georgics,” Bk. ii, St. 17, L. 31 (H. W. Preston’s Translation).—Vergil.
Harriet Waters Preston, a distinguished American scholar, translator, and writer, was born in Danvers, Mass., January 14 (?), 1836, and died in 1911. Besides her translations of Mistral’s “Mireio,” Virgil’s “Georgics,” etc., she has published: “Aspendale,” “Troubadours and Trouvéres,” “Love in the Nineteenth Century,” “A Year in Eden,” etc.
Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.
“Le Tartuffe,” Act. iii, Scene 3,—Molière.