Come, Liberty, thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears;
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.
Some of Horton's friends undertook to help him publish a volume of his poems so that from the sale of these he might purchase his freedom and go to the new colony of Liberia. The young man now became fired with ambition and inspiration. Thrilled by the new hope he wrote
'Twas like the salutation of the dove,
Borne on the zephyr through some lonesome grove,
When spring returns, and winter's chill is past,
And vegetation smiles above the blast.
Horton's master, however, demanded for him an exorbitant price, and when the booklet, The Hope of Liberty, appeared in 1829 it had nothing of the sale that was hoped for. He lived for years as a janitor at the University, executed small commissions for verse from the students, who treated him kindly, and in later years even went to Philadelphia; but his old dreams had faded. Several reprintings of his poems were made, however, and one of these was bound with the 1838 edition of Phillis Wheatley's poems. He died in 1880 (by other accounts 1883). A scholarly article about him was written for the Southern Workman of October, 1914, by Mr. Stephen B. Weeks, who in turn owed much to the researches of Prof. George S. Wills.
Horton's work showed readily the influence of his models. He used especially the meter of the common evangelical hymns, and cultivated the vague personification of the poets of the eighteenth century. He himself, however, was essentially a romantic poet, as was evinced by his fondness for Byron and Marlowe. His common style is represented by the following lines from his poem entitled On the Evening and Morning:
When Evening bids the Sun to rest retire,
Unwearied Ether sets her lamps on fire;
Lit by one torch, each is supplied in turn,
Till all the candles in the concave burn.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
At length the silver queen begins to rise,
And spread her glowing mantle in the skies,
And from the smiling chambers of the east,
Invites the eye to her resplendent feast.
The passion in the heart of this man, his undoubted gifts as a poet, and the bitter disappointment of his yearnings have all but added one more to the long list of those who died with their ambitions blasted and their most ardent hopes defeated.
In 1854 appeared the first edition of Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, by Frances Ellen Watkins, commonly known as Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper, who was for many years before the public and who is even now remembered by many friends. Mrs. Harper was a woman of strong personality and could read her poems to advantage. Her verse was very popular, not less than ten thousand copies of her booklets being sold. It was decidedly lacking in technique, however, and much in the style of Mrs. Hemans. The Death of the Old Sea King, for instance, is in the ballad style cultivated by this poet and Longfellow; but it is not a well-sustained effort. Mrs. Harper was best when most simple, as when in writing of children she said: