February
TAMPA ROBINS
The robin laughed in the orange-tree:
“Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time’s scythe shall reap but bliss for me—
Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree....
“I’ll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I’ll call down through the green and gold
Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,
Bestir thee under the orange-tree.”
Sidney Lanier
February First
The Emperor of France made him Commander of the Legion of Honor; The Emperor of Russia, Knight of the Order of St. Ann; the King of Denmark, Knight of the Dannebrog; the King of Portugal, Knight of the Tower and Sword; the King of Belgium, Knight of the Order of St. Leopold; simultaneously with Tennyson, he was awarded an LL.D. by the University of Cambridge, England; he received honorary membership from a score of the world’s leading societies of science and scholarship; the Pope conferred upon him a noteworthy testimonial; the Emperor of Mexico gave him a decoration; and Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardinia, Bremen, and France struck medals in his honor as the greatest scientist of the New World, and the peer of any in the Old.
The government of his own country, says Professor Francis H. Smith, has “carefully omitted his name in official records of the departments he created”; nor is it even given a place among the many inscribed in the mighty mosaic of our National Library.
Matthew Fontaine Maury dies at Lexington, Va., 1873
Texas secedes, 1861