Talks about authors and their work (1899) (14595893668)

Identifier: talksaboutauthor00bloo (find matches)
Title: Talks about authors and their work
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Bloor, Ella Reeve, 1862-1951
Subjects: Authors, American Authors
Publisher: Chicago : A. Flanagan
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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he wood of the tree.It was given to him on his seventy-second birth-day. He was very much pleased, and wrote apoem about it for the children, which begins Am I a king that I should call my ownThis splendid ebon throne;Or by what reason, or what right divine,Can I proclaim it mine? He was a good friend to the poor and friend-less, helping many young authors to get theirstories and poems published. He was always pleasant and patient with themany strangers who visited him. Tike Whit-tier, he felt very indignant over the wrongs ofthe slaves, and early in his life he wrote stirringpoems about the bitter injustice of buying andselling human beings. Some of his friends believed in slavery, butmany others were glad to read his earnest, burn-ing words. Charles Dickens wrote from England: TALKS ABOUT AUTHORS, 85 Heaven speed your slavery poems, I amlooking for them eagerly. Longfellows poems on Slavery were writtenin 1842, while on the ocean, returning fromEurope. The Slaves Dream, The Quadroon
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HiSia, ?;Ui***a*a«i- LONGFEIyI,0\Vs CHAIR. Girl and The Witnesses are the names of some of the slave poems. The last verse of The Warning shows the power and force of his pleadings: There is a poor blind Samson in this land, Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel, 86 TALKS ABOUT AUTHORS. Who may, in some grim revel, raise his handAnd shake the pillars of this common wealTill the vast temple of our libertiesA shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies. From these glimpses of Longfellows life andwork we know that he truly felt Life is real,life is earnest, and his own life was planned asthe structure he writes of in The Builders: All are architects of FateWorking in these walls of Time, Some with massive deeds and great,Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low, Each thing in its place is best,And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise. Time is with materials filled;Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks w