Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/90

WILLIAM E. SCHENCK. William Rogers Schenck was born at Cincinnati, then in the North-Western Territory, October twentieth, 1799. He was the eldest child of William C. Schenck and Elizabeth R. Schenck. His father was associated with John Cleves Sjmmes in the early settlement and surveys of the Miami Valley, and resided, after 1800, at Franklin, on the Great Miami river — a village which he himself founded — and con- tinued to be a leading, influential, and highly respected citizen of southern Ohio, until his death, which occurred at Columbus, January twelfth, 1821, while in attendance in the Legislature of the State as a Representative from Warren county. William Rogers Schenck had no advantages of education except such as were afforded by the common English country schools of that early day in Ohio. He was brought up a merchant, and pursued that business at Franklin until near the close of his life. He was married at Cincinnati, September fourth, 1822, to Phebe W. Reeder. In December, 1832, on his return with a small party of men from an expe- dition to Taos, in New Mexico, he perished on the prairies, after having been wounded in an encounter with the Camanche Indians. His sad and untimely fate was mourned and commemorated in a fitting elegy by his companion, Albert S. Pike, the poet of Arkansas, who in long years of intimacy had well learned to know and appreciate the generous, noble, and genial qualities and brilliant talents of his unfortunate friend. With Mr. Schenck, literary exercises were never more than an occasional recrea- tion. He wrote many short poems. The best were contributed to the Cincinnati Literary Gazette, in the years 1824 and 1825. They were never published in any collected form. SUICIDE. Suicide ! — In thought as fearful as in purpose base, — The hero's bane, the coward's antidote. The first bears up against the ills of fate, 'Gainst Fortune's frowns, a friend's de- pravity, A mistress false, a country's base ingrati- tude, And all the misei'ics that man inherits, Yet rises still superior to them all ; Thy meaner refuge scorns, and dares to live ; Nay, glories in his stei-n philosophy. His hope of heaven, is his prop on earth ; He feels his spirit rise as ills assail him ; He nobly lives — or dies to live forever. The other, like the poor despairing mari- ner. Buffets awhile the angry billows' roar ; But when a wave, more boisterous than the rest, (74)