Professor Edward Rowland Sill
E. R. Sill, as he signed his poetry, was born in Windsor CT, in 1841, and died at Cleveland, OH in 1887. After teaching at Yale University, he moved to California, then to Ohio. His relative, John Sill, came to America from England in 1637. John Sill's son, Captain Joseph Sill, fought in King Philip's War, and, Edward's grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. He was not strictly a nature poet, but, when he wrote about Nature, he utilized both haunting and beautiful imagery: "Cold - cold - the very sun looks cold/with those thin rays of chilly gold." [From "Eastern Winter." I've included this poem below]
At least two biographies have been written about Sill: a biography by Wm. B. Parker in 1915 and Edward Rowland Sill: The Twilight Poet, by Alfred R. Ferguson in 1955. When he died at age 46, his posthumous collection of poems was favorably reviewed: "The recent death of Mr. Sill was an incalculable loss to American letters.... His poems were marked by a thoughtfulness, delicacy, and incisiveness, which placed them among the very best of current poetry." The review went on to call Sill "one of the strongest and finest of this generation of American writers."
"A Bird's Song"
The shadow of a bird
On the shadow of a bough:
Sweet and clear his song is heard,
"Seek me now - I see thee now!"
The bird swings out of reach in the swaying tree,
But his shadow on the garden-walk below belongs to me.
The phantom of my Love
False dreams with hope doth fill,
Softly singing, far above,
"Love me still - I love thee still!"
The cruel vision hovers at my sad heart's door,
But the soul I love is soaring out of reach forevermore.
"Eastern Winter"
Cold - cold - the very sun looks cold,
With those thin rays of chilly gold
Laid on that gap of bluish sky
That glazes like a dying eye.
The naked trees are shivering,
Each cramped and bare branch quivering,
Cutting the bleak wind into blades,
Whose edge to brain and bone invades.
That hard ground seems to ache, all day,
Even for a sheet of snow, to lay
Upon its icy feet and knees,
Stretched stiffly there to freeze and freeze.
And you shrunk mortal - what's within
That nipped and winter-shriveled skin?
The pinched face drawn in peevish lines,
The voice that through his blue lips whines, -
The frost has got within, you see, -
Left but a selfish me and me:
The heart is chilled, its nerves are numb,
And love has long been frozen dumb.
Ah, give me back the clime I know,
Where all the year geraniums blow,
And hyacinth-buds bloom white for snow;
Where hearts beat warm with life's delight,
Through radiant winter's sunshine bright,
And summer's starry deeps of night;
Where man may let earth's beauty thaw
The wintry creed which Calvin saw,
That God is only Power and Law;
And out of Nature's Bible prove,
That here below as there above
Our Maker - Father - God - is Love.