Till Avon's swans—
Awakening at the inspired strain,
Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again,
—where is she? Mindful of the futility of claiming for an author more than is warranted, no eulogy will be offered, extravaganza will be avoided. On the contrary, that criticism will be eschewed which "damns with faint praise" what is cordially admired, fearful lest others may not assent. William Ward and his poems shall speak largely for themselves; knowledge of the man and his work being sufficient, it is believed, to justify the claim that he is a poet entitled to distinction.
Like many others who have reflected honor on the State, he was a son of Mississippi by adoption, a New Englander by birth. Son of William and Charlotte Ward, he was born in August, 1823, at Litchfield, Connecticut, an historic village, the early home of the Beechers; once noted also for its famous law school, attended by many from the South, John C. Calhoun among the number. Scarcely less was it famous for the beauty of the surrounding scenery and for the aristocracy of its leading families, who boasted their descent from old English houses as much as did the Virginians of their Cavalier and the Carolinians of their Huguenot ancestry. Social aristocracy in New England was a more prominent feature of life there than is commonly supposed. Among the leading families of Litchfield was that of the Wards. William, father of the subject of this sketch, was a jeweler by occupation, a man of integrity and unusual intelligence; wealthy until middle life, when it appears that reverses overtook him. For this reason his children, excepting one, perhaps, did not receive a college education as was intended. John became an Episcopal clergyman; Elias a jeweler, like his father; Henry, sorely disappointed in not being able to attend Yale College, scholarly, poetic, took reluctantly to printing an editorial work; Mary Charlotte, literary in her tastes, married a wealthy gentleman, traveled in Europe, and wrote sketches of travel and a number of poems. Of Henry Ward, a word more in passing to indicate more fully the literary leaning of the family. At the age of thirteen, his poem, "Novel Reading; or The Feast of Fiction," published in the local paper, gave him notoriety and raised great expectations. Thwarted in his college aspirations looking toward the ministry, he grew melancholy and excessively reserved. After forty years of life as a practical printer and editor, he left at his decease manuscripts in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, versification of the Books of Job and Lamentations, and a volume of hymns. His claim to the well-known hymn, "I Would Not Live Always," generally accredited to William Augustus Muhlenberg, and also to the poem, "Tell Me Ye Winged Winds," usually ascribed to Charles Mackay, is set forth in Harpel's Poets and Poetry of Printerdom. In it, too, may be found other poems by him and several by his sister Mary, then Mrs. Webster.
But to William Ward, the youngest son, attention must now be turned exclusively, with a glance first at the brief but important period of his life spent in his boyhood home. Of those early days which evidently left deep impression on his after life, less can be said than could be wished. The beauty of the country about Litchfield must have impressed him as it did Henry and Harriet Beecher, born amid the same surroundings, ten or twelve years before him. Like them, no doubt, he gazed with delight on the glorious sunsets which Mrs. Stowe so enthusiastically describes, and roamed in perhaps the same mood the woods in which they speculated whether Apollo had not there once built his altars. He, too, wandered along the banks of crystal Bantam River and dreamily watched the clouds as they hooded and un-hooded Mount Tom in the hazy distance. Nature there surely must have been "meet nurse for a poetic child."
His scholastic education was completed under the tuition of a learned Episcopal clergyman whose private academy for boys was well patronized. He was an insatiable reader and a fairly good student, though his mind ran in literary lines rather than to the study of the exact sciences. The classics he must have especially preferred, and in them been carefully instructed, judging from the familiarity he manifests in his poems with the mythology and literature in general of Greece and Rome. Astronomy seems to have laid strong hold upon him; for it held high place in his esteem in later life. He early gave evidence of a poetic tendency, and some of his boyish effusions are said to have possessed considerable merit. Intuition, environment, and reading apparently combined to make of this New England lad a poet. What the experiences of active life contributed in this direction, a look ahead will show.
When only sixteen years of age, a great and unexpected change in his plans and prospects occurred. He was urged by his brother Elias who had gone South and set up in business at Columbus, Mississippi, to come and learn under him the watch repairing and jewelry business. Though his tastes and aptitudes led in opposite direction, the opening seemed too favorable to be set aside. The invitation was accepted and bidding adieu forever to the home of his love, with mingled enthusiasm and trepidation the young man set out on his long journey to the South. Embarking at New York on a sailing vessel, he reached Mobile, Alabama, after a safe but lengthy voyage. Of the experiences of that voyage which afterward gave coloring to some of his most poetic lines and of the amusing incident attendant upon his arrival at Mobile notice cannot now be taken.
Ten or twelve years of quiet busy life at Columbus, Mississippi constitute the second distinct period in William Ward's comparatively uneventful life. His letters home indicate that many of the sights and incidents connected with life in that almost frontier land were new and startling to the scholarly youth from staid Connecticut. By degrees he became accustomed to his surroundings, and identified himself with the society and business of the place. Modest and reserved in public, with his friends he was ever a genial and interesting companion. More student than mechanic, he would doubtless have preferred a literary career. As it was, his literary tendency continued to assert itself, and before attaining his majority verses from his pen began to appear in print. At twenty or earlier he became a contributor to the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, to which for ten years or more thereafter he continued to furnish poems or themes chiefly classical and patriotic. First in order of time of those that have been preserved is "The Grave of Hale," which appeared in the issue of June 3, 1843. In smooth and vigorous Spenserian stanzas, he protests against the neglect of the martyr-patriot's grave.
"Alas! and hath no gentle honoring hand,
But that of Nature decked his tomb with flowers,
We mourn the heroes of some storied land,
And leave a cold and barren grave to ours."
Among other published poems of his early period indicative of his devotion to the classic Muse, and of his ardent patriotism, may be named "The Egean," "Greece," "The Bellman of '76," and "Our Own New England."
These lines from the first two poems, written respectively in 1844 and 1845, but for the dates might seem to have been inspired by the result of the late sad struggle between the Greeks and Turks: