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year afterward became editor of the Louisville "Journal," which
position he held and made illustrious during the remainder of his
life. His wit and humor gave him great influence, and his paper,
afterwards consolidated with the "Courier" and known as the
"Courier-Journal," became a power in politics, commerce, and society.
A fine statue of him adorns the Courier-Journal building in
Louisville, and his fame is by no means forgotten. "Prenticeana" is a
collection of his witty and pungent paragraphs. See Memorial address
by his successor, Henry Watterson.
WORKS.
Life of Henry Clay.
Poems, edited by John James Piatt.
Prenticeana, [with life-sketch.]
Mr. Prentice's best known poem is the "Closing Year," which
elocutionists have kept before the public and which has often inspired
young poets to sad verses on the passing of time.
THE CLOSING YEAR.
(_From Poems._[12])
'Tis midnight's holy hour--and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds,
The bell's deep-notes are swelling. 'Tis the knell
Of the departed year.
No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest,
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred,
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand--
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged locks--and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead Year,
Gone from the earth forever.
'Tis a time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart a spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have passed away
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
O'er what has passed to nothingness.
The year
Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow on each heart. In its swift course
It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful,
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man, and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er
The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and shield
Flashed in the light of midday--and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
Remorseless Time!--
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! what power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity? On, still on
He presses and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the Northern hurricane
And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag--but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,
And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep
O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink,
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
Spring, blazing, from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations; and the very stars,
Yon bright and burning blazonry of God,
Glitter awhile in their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away,
To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time,
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.
PARAGRAPHS.
(_From Prenticeana._)
A pin has as much head as a good many authors, and a good deal more
point.
The Turkish men hold that women have no souls, and prove by their
treatment of them that they have none themselves.
A writer in the "American Agriculturist" insists that farmers ought to
learn to make better fences. Why not establish a fencing-school for
their benefit?
The thumb is a useful member, but, because you have one, you needn't
necessarily try to keep your neighbors under it.
The greatest truths are the simplest; the greatest man and women are
sometimes so, too.
A New Orleans poet calls the Mississippi the most eloquent of rivers.
It ought to be eloquent; it has a dozen mouths.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] By permission of Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati.
EDWARD COATE PINKNEY.
~1802=1828.~
EDWARD COATE[13] PINKNEY was the son of the distinguished orator and
statesman, William Pinkney, of Maryland, and was born in London while
his father was minister to England. After attending the College of
Baltimore, he entered the Navy at fourteen years of age and spent much
of his time of service in the Mediterranean. On his father's death,
1822, he returned to Baltimore and engaged in the practice of law, at
the same time making some reputation by his poems. "A Health" and
"Picture Song" are considered his best--their beauty makes us mourn
his early death. At the time he was numbered one of the "five greatest
poets of the country." On his return from a journey to Mexico, taken
for his health, he was elected, in 1826, professor of Belles-lettres
in the University of Maryland, formerly called the College of
Baltimore.
WORKS.
Poems: Rodolph, a Fragment, and other Poems.
A HEALTH.
I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone;
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
'Tis less of earth than heaven.
Her every tone is music's own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.
Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,--
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