Her Poetry

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."





 
Acknowledgments

Notes



References



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