The New Student's Reference Work/Marston, Philip Bourke

Mar'ston, Philip Bourke, one of the best-known of the younger late-day English poets, was born at London in 1850. Philip was a pretty child, and it was to him that his godmother, the author of John Halifax, addressed her well-known poem beginning:

Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my king.⁠

Yet those handsome eyes went out into utter darkness, the result of a blow on one of them, got in a baby romp when Philip was but three. The blind boy began to write when he had hardly left off his bibs. At his father's house he met and well knew Browning, Swinburne, Dickens, Miss Muloch, Rossetti and many others. When of age his first book was published, Song Tide, sung in praise of his sweetheart. Three years later appeared his second book, All in All, telling of his great grief for the death of this same betrothed. His last volume, Wind Voices, is considered his best. Marston's poetry has pleased readers and critics alike, and much of it will live and be remembered. Marston died on Feb. 13, 1887.