Representative women of New England/Ella Maude Moore
ELLA MAUDE MOORE, author of "Songs of Sunshine and Shadow," is the wife of Joseph E. Moore, of Thomaston, Me., and the chief representative of that flourishing seaboard town in literature to-day. Daughter of Samuel Emerson Smith (Bowdoin College, 1839), she was born in 1849 in the town of Warren, Me. Her paternal grandfather, the Hon. Edwin Smith, of Warren (Harvard College, 1811), was son of Manasseh Smith (Harvard College, 1773) and his wife Hannah, daughter of the Rev. Daniel and Hannah (Emerson) Emerson, of Hollis, N.H. Hannah Emerson, wife of the Rev. Daniel and grandmother of Edwin Smith, was a daughter of the Rev. Joseph* and Mary (Moody) Emerson and sister to the Rev. William' Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Samuel E. Smith, father of Mrs. Moore, removed with his family to Thomaston when his daughter was three years old. Here she grew up and was educated in the public schools. In early life her literary tastes began to assert themselves in poetic effusions, humorous, satirical, or pathetic, according to her mood or the nature of the subject that had awakened her interest. When but a school-girl, she composed the verses now so widely known, and at the time so much discussed, known as "Rock of Ages," a poem spoken of by the Lewiston Journal as "the most celebrated written by a Maine woman." It was the result of no prolonged or studied effort: it was spontaneous—in the phraseology of the poem, "sung as sing the birds in June." It was written, without a thought of its survival, on the inside of an old envelope, which she had torn open at the ends and spread apart, crossing and recrossing the lines to find room. After she had thrown it away, one of the family picked it up, deciphered the verses, and was astonished at their merit. Urged to do so, she reproduced the verses, and they appeared in the Maine Standard.
The poem has subjected the author to considerable amusing annoyance, for, some years after it was written, it appeared in The Christian at Work as the production of a man in Ohio, who sought to establish his claim by setting forth some personal details connected with its origin. It also apjjearetl in a published collection of poems in the West and credited to a Western woman. Later on a London literary journal published a strongly satirical article in regard to its pretended American authorship, strangely confounding the poem with the familiar hynm of "Toplady." The poem by Mrs. Moore describes the various emotions awakened by singing "Rock of Ages" —in the girl, in "lips grown aged," and "over the coffin lid"; and only neglect to read the verses could explain the critic's mistake. Mrs. Moore contributed for several years occasional short stories and verses to various magazines and newspapers, and on one occasion entered the lists in competition for the prize offered by the Youth's Companion for the best story for girls. There were seven thousand com- petitors that year, and Mrs. Moore received the first prize of five hundred dollars.
In 1880 Lothrop & Co., Boston, published her volume of verses entitled "Songs of Sun- shine and Shadow," which has passed through two editions.
She must be classed among the poets of nature. A list of her themes would reveal this, for she sings of trees and flowers, brooks and rills, of night-fall, summer and winter, and the voice of spring. The much quoted words of Wordsworth, speaking of himself, would truly apply to the author of "Songs of Sunshine and Shadow": —
The "meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light.
The glory and the freshness of a dream."
How clearly this is revealed in the poem, "To a Flower Painter," one of the best of the collection, through which breathes a desire to render immortal the varied beautiful forms of field and forest! —
"If I had all an artist's wondrous cunning,
The magic of the painter's glowing art,
All the wild flowers of limpid brooklets running,
All blossoms of the field and wood a part —
The buttercup with disc of sunny yellow,
The l)los.s()m of the wind-flower frail and fair,
The honeyed clover that the brown bees fellow.
The columbine that sways the summer air —
Pd paint them all on tablet, panel, portal,
And render them immortal.
"I'd whisper to the lily, standing stately
In fair, unconscious grace.
Or to the sweet wild rose ablu.shing greatly,
'Bend down, O queen, bend down a little space,
That I may read the beauty of thy face ! '
"And I would wander far in forest reaches,
Where wild-wood vines entangle woodland ways,
To find the pulpit whence the brown lack preaches
His silent sermons through the summer days.
"And I would seek the crimson cup-moss, growing
In shadow'd nook.s, and by the brooklet's brink
The fronded fern, the scarlet lily glownig
In sunny places, and the wild clove-pink;
And I would gather sprays of woodbine climbing
And bearded grasses from the fields and fells,
List'uing the while, if I might catch the chiming
' Of wild bluebells.
"From sunlit heights, from billowy .seas of meadow.
From ferny hollows and from giassy braes.
The blossoms of the sunshine and the shadow.
With all the grace of nature's wild sweet ways,
I'd glean and paint on tablet, panel, portal,
To render them immortal.
"And they who never see the summer's glory.
The treasures of the woodland and the stream,
Should learn from me to read the wondrous story.
Sweeter by far than poet's sweetest dream
(And, reading, cease to count the weary hours) —
God's gift of flowers!"
"Rock of Ages" and "Dandelions" have been most widely quoted, and appeal most strongly to the popular ear, yet they are by no means her best.
The poems are chiefly of the lyrical order, interspersed with ballads, metrical translations of odes of Horace, and some exquisite sonnets. Occasionally she tries her hand at .some historical incident, throwing it, as a study, into poetic measures. An illustration of this is "The Death of Charles the Ninth." This was written for her brother, then a student at Bowdoin College, to be used as a recitation in a competition for a prize.
If dramatic poetry be that in which the objects contemplated, animate or inanimate, are presented as speaking for them.selves, then several of her ]X)ems are of this class, .such as "Immortality," "Useless," "The' Poplar," and others. In fact, her compass is wide, for she has produced some humorous poetry as well, of a high order, that has never found its way into print.
But to those who know her best her published works fail to adequately represent her. They seem but a fragment of what, had her health been uniform, she would probably have produced. For years she suffered from a complication of nervous maladies, and doubtless "learned in suffering what she taught in song."
Her endowments are found in alliance with a masculine understanding and finely adjusted ethical and religious qualities. She is a member of the Baptist church, and lives an active Christian life; and one of her best rewards for publishing a volume of poetry has been the letters she has received acknowledging the help and comfort derived from some of the poems which seemed to voice the sentiment of the sufferer. Mrs. Moore is exceedingly interested in all questions of theology and religion, acquainted with the discussion of "the higher criticism," well read in science and philosophy, in which she thinks profoundly and reasons acutely. Should future health and leisure be granted her, with a disposition to write again for publication, I should rather expect from her pen something in the line of religious life and experience, or an examination of some subject m philosophy, or some application of a new scientific fact to life and conduct, than more in the line of poetry and fiction. I add a sonnet from "Songs of Sunshine and Shadow," addressed to C. E. S., almost perfect in form and rich in suggestion:
"If thou, dear one, wert far away from me,
And continents lay between, or oceans wide.
When lone I knelt to j^ray at eventide,
First on my lips would be my prayer for thee.
And all the distance would as nothing be
To swift-winged blessings that to thee would glide.
Thou hast gone from me, and the grave doth hide
Thee in a shadow wider than the wide sea;
Yet, when I kneel at morn or eve to pray,
Shall I not pray for thee? Ne'er can come
A day I do not love thee: must I say
No word of love? Thou livest, dear, somewhere.
Whv, if the dead are deaf, must we be dumb?"