Than our own Indiana.”
Benjamin S. Parker, of all the poets discovered in Indiana by Coggeshall, acquired the greatest skill in versification, and wrote most comprehensively of the pioneer life. He was born on a farm near New Castle (1833), and is one, at least, to whom the phrase “racy of the soil” needs no explanation. He lived in a log cabin, performing the hardest farm labor, and long observation of life at the West made him an authority in matters of customs and dialect. His volume “The Cabin in the Clearing” (1887) contains many poems in which the trials of the earlier settlers are graphically depicted, and it was his right, as one who had aided in the rough work of the pioneers, to urge the new generations to use worthily the opportunities which they inherited. Of the fauna and flora of his own woodlands Mr. Parker became the especial celebrant. The following lines from one of his most graceful pieces are characteristic of his happiest moods:—
“I had a dream of other days,—
In golden luxury waved the wheat;
In tangled greenness shook the maize;
The squirrels ran with nimble feet,
And in and out among the trees
The hangbird darted like a flame;
The cat-bird piped his melodies,
Purloining every warbler’s fame: