About the time Susan was finishing her math
studies at the Academy, she began writing a collection
of poetry on the blank pages at the end of one of her
math folios (also called ciphers). She called
these folios collectively her "manuscript". She
was nearly fifteen years old and continued to collect
these poems over the next three years. Of these
thirty-eight poems, all but one are included at the
end of the third folio, with the last one (in terms of
chronology), appearing at the end of the first
folio. This was a time of very romantic,
sentimental, melancholy (and often maudlin)
literature. Edgar Allen Poe and Thomas
Moore were at the end of their days.
Literary journals such as Graham's Magazine
(to which Poe had been a frequent contributor)
and The Flag of Our Union were providing
a steady flow of new literature. The Clearspring
Sentinel always announced the arrival of the
eagerly awaited latest issues. The first page of
local newspapers everywhere usually featured a poem or
two, sometimes from a prominent source, other times
from local talent. With few exceptions the poems
that Susan has included in her manuscript are of a
personal nature, pertaining to her inner feelings.
The poems fall into two
distinct groups. The first of these groups
comprises seventeen poems ending with "Beauty is but a
vain and doubtful good." 8 In general the tone
of this first group of poems is more positive than
those that follow later. They express
friendship, young love, and a recurring
"forget-me-not" theme. Within this group Susan
has written the date July 1, 1848, at which time she
was fourteen years old and probably still a scholar at
the Academy. This date was a few months later
than the last date in her math notes.
Several of the poems in this group have been
identified as the work of others, and Susan's copies
sometimes have modifications (refer to the Notes on
the Poetry, page ). She wrote her name often
throughout the manuscript, sometimes as if signing off
on a math assignment, and at other times just as a
doodle. Unfortunately, she had a habit of
signing her name in various ways after a poem, even
when it wasn't her own work. Was this truly
plagiarism? Probably not. She wouldn't
have deceived her teacher and she couldn't have
anticipated that this work would be published almost
145 years later. But it does make it difficult
to determine which of the poetry (if any of it) is
wholly original with her. The modifications to
published works might indicate that they were used as
part of a comparative literature study at the
Academy. In some cases there are apparent
literary alterations such as in "Fairest flower, all
flowers excelling". In other cases where a poem
differs only slightly from a published version it is
possible that it was taught to her by a teacher
reciting from memory. One of her teachers may
have been Irish-born Nicholas Keefe, who may have
favored the literature of his homeland. This
could account for the fact that two of the identified
poems are by the Irish poet Thomas Moore and a
third is a selection from an opera by Michael William
Balfe , who was also born in Ireland.
It cannot be stated with certainty
just why Susan included these poems in the folios with
her math assignments. Perhaps she was just
economizing on paper or it may have been a convenient
place to save her favorite verse. In most cases
she has written several to a page, separating one from
the next by drawing a line across the page. The
penmanship, though clear, is not as meticulous as that
found in her earlier math notes, which may indicate
that the poems were for her personal use or to be
recited in class but not graded as text. There
is no evidence of erasure or editorial changes in the
text of the poetry (with the rare exception of
inserting a dropped letter and one place where she ran
out of space on a line). This is significant in
that it implies that either she had an incredible
knack for generating finished poetry at the first
writing, or, more probably, she was copying from
another draft.
The poems are reproduced here in
the same order as they occur in the manuscript with
the exception that each occupies its own page.
All spellings, punctuation, and versification are
Susan's. Also included are her occasional
marginalia.
|
To the afflicted one
Think the distance that thou
art
The kiss dear maid, thy lips
have left
Fairest flower, all flowers
excelling
One kind kiss before we part
Love thee, dearest, love thee!
My early love
My heart and lute
To Thee
Forget me not when far away
There is a bloom that never
fades
Blue-eyed Mary
I'll think of thee when far
away
I'll think of thee
Thou art fair, gentle lady, I
can gaze on thy brow
Remember me, and Forget me not
Beauty is but a vain and
doubtful good
|

|
Susan began her second group of poems on
January 10, 1850. She was now sixteen years old
and no longer a scholar at the Academy. She had
been keeping poetry in her manuscript for about a year
and a half. Mid-century had arrived cold and
wintery and the weather was particularly harsh in
Clear Spring:
OLD WINTER - The hoary one is upon
us. With frost and snow and sharp wind, he
speaks his power and tells his moral. Winter is ever
a time of hardship. - Yet it has its pleasures; and
if its cold winds which freeze the body should only
warm the heart, its duties would be well performed.
By the tenth of the month, the ground outside Susan's
house was buried un-der eleven inches of
snow. That night Susan worked late writing
seven po-ems in her manuscript until she was "pretty
tired of it". The next day she wrote another
five. But this poetry makes no allusion to the
weather. Her winter hardship lay much deeper
than the snow — this winter brought her no pleasures
nor did its cold winds warm her heart. Susan's
heart "is very sad tonight".
What drove her to stay up all night
doing this? Whether she authored these lines
herself or selected them from the works of others,
when they are read collectively they take on the
appearance of a diary of a very unhappy teenager who
has just been dumped by her first love. She
expresses her love, worries (yet again) that she'll be
forgotten, expresses her sadness tonight, craves true
friendship, and says farewell. In the five poems
written the next day she scorns the consolation of her
elders ("What is love! an idle passion") and
explicates the awful truth of what has happened ("Far,
far from me my lover flies"). Later she will
slump deep into self-pity in "The Blighted
Rose". Eventually she will get over it.
But it will take about eight years for her to de-cide
to marry the Snyder boy whom she has already known all
of her life and who she sees nearly every day working
across the street from her father's store. If
her future husband is her true love why doesn't she
recognize him sooner? The answer may lie within
the poetry. Susan's normally clear hand has
taken a decidedly downward turn, which is not a good
sign for her state of mind.
Of the twenty-one poems in this
second group, all but the last one are written on a
separate sheaf of paper that has been sewn into the
folio following the previous group of poems.
Most of them continue to portray the lost love
theme. Beyond those first two winter days, she
has not dated any of the remaining poems. The
very last one, isolated from the rest, is taken from a
magazine about a year and a half later. Susan's
use of quotation marks may also be an indication where
she has found a verse in another source that suits her
mood. For example "When other lips and other
hearts", is from "The Bohemian Girl" , a popular opera
of the time.
|
Forget me not
- what a varied feeling
Love
There's a tear that falls when
we part
Of thee
Sadness
Friendship
Farewell
What is love? an idle passion
Oh! after many roving years
Far, far from me my lover flies
I'll remember thee
Where are the friends that to
me were so dear
Lines to ____ _____
The blighted rose
Love's lightning rod
A dying sister's appeal
To ____ ____
The Farewell
To the Estranged
There's not a flower that decks
the garden
Never again on earth canst thou
be loved
|
One additional poem, clipped from a magazine, was found
tucked within the pages of the manuscript. It
reinforces the lost love theme:
|

"...and pretty tired of it."
|