The
little folks’ friend has passed away,
And his pen is covered with rust;
For
the Lord is good, and he taketh his own,
For a higher and nobler Trust.
“Oh,
the years are many, the years are long,”
And our hearts are tried and sore;
But
we wait, Eugene, till the last great scene,
To listen and laugh once more.
The
trumpet and drum shall beat and call,
Tho’ its champion’s voice is stilled;
And
Wynken and Blynken asleep shall fall,
Of thy fancies their visions filled.
“Oh,
the years are many, the years are long,”
But in the far-off days to be,
Thy
sweet, sweet rhymes of childhood times,
Shall be sung at the mother’s knee.
And
Little Boy Blue shall lisp thy name,
In his mother’s arms at eve;
And
she shall tell of the poet king,
And thy mystic tales shall weave.
“Oh,
the years are many, the years are long,”
And one fain would learn what they screen;
But
we know thy songs shall light the throngs,
Forever and ever, Eugene.
Nov.
12, 1895
Pub. in Boston
Eve.
Transcript,
Nov. 25, ‘95
Eugene Field (1850–1895)
was a popular humorist and newspaperman often called the "Poet of
Childhood." Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Roswell M. and Frances Reed
Field, both of New England ancestry, Field claimed two birthdates—2 and 3
September 1850—in later years so that if friends forgot him on the first day,
they could remember him on the second. His father was an attorney and attained
some fame after successfully defending Dred Scott, fugitive slave, in Scott's
first trial. Field's mother died when he was six, and he and his younger
brother Roswell were sent to Amherst, Massachusetts, to be cared for by their
paternal cousin Mary Field French until their maturity.
Field began college at Williams in 1868, after
barely passing the entrance exams; he left New England the following spring
because of the serious illness and subsequent death of his father in St. Louis.
In the fall of 1869 he entered Knox College at Galesburg, Illinois; the
following fall he enrolled as a junior at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
In all of these attempts at higher learning Field was better known for his wit
and conviviality than for his seriousness as a student, and he never graduated
from college. In 1871 he collected his share of the inheritance from his
father's estate, and he spent six months and his inheritance in Europe.
In 1873 Field married Julia Sutherland
Comstock, then sixteen, of St. Joseph, Missouri, and they had eight children,
five of whom reached maturity. Field worked as a journalist on several Missouri
newspapers during the next eight years: the St. Louis Evening Journal, St.
Joseph Gazette, St. Louis Times-Journal, and the Kansas City Times.
In 1881 he moved his family to Denver where he wrote for the Denver
Tribune. In 1883 Field received an offer to move to Chicago, where he wrote a
column entitled "Sharps and Flats" for the Chicago Morning News until
his death in 1895 of heart failure.
Virtually all of Field's writings first
appeared in one of his newspaper columns. The Tribune Primer (1881)
is made up of selections from the Denver Tribune and modeled after The
New England Primer. Field's Primer is a parody of the earlier one and
directed at an audience considerably older than the subheadings suggest. The
whimsical, often sardonic, humor in The Tribune Primer—for example,
suggesting that children pat the wasp, eat a wormy apple, or put mud in baby's
ears—seems indicative of Field's early attitude toward children. He had the
reputation of making faces at, or otherwise teasing, small children when he
thought he was unobserved by adults. Slason Thompson, Field's early biographer,
suggests that Field did not like children, but Charles Dennis, writing later,
believes that Field had an attitude of one child to another; Dennis further
argues that Field went through a "sweetening process" which made his
later works gentler and more sentimental than this early, satiric work.
Field found much to be satiric about in his
early days in Denver, and as managing editor of the Denver Tribune and
writer of a column, "Odds and Ends," he managed to poke fun at the
climate, the muddy roads, the frontier language, and other aspects of Denver
life he found hypocritical. Nonsense for Old and Young (1901)
contains humorous sketches from the Denver Tribune not included in The
Tribune Primer.
Field had a large following of readers by 1883,
the year he was lured to Chicago to write his own column for the Chicago
Morning News at a salary of fifty dollars a week. Once established in the
city, Field found that the salary, munificent by Denver's standards, was only
reasonable in Chicago. He saw much in Chicago that begged for reform,
particularly the emphasis on making money. Culture's Garland (1887)
is made up of selected satirical essays from Field's column "Sharps and
Flats." Chiding Chicagoans for their materialism and calling their city
"Porkopolis," Field found, not surprisingly, that the local residents
did not appreciate being on the acid end of his pen. Perhaps he redeemed
himself later with his often quoted reply to British novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward
in London. She asked him, "Do you not find the social atmosphere of
Chicago exceedingly crude, furnishing one with little intellectual companionship?"
Field replied, "Really Mrs. Ward, ... I do not consider myself competent
to give an opinion ... up to the time Barnum captured me and took me to Chicago
to be civilized I had always lived in a tree in the wilds of Missouri."
In addition to satiric essays, Field was also
writing stories and verse of a sentimental nature. It was in 1888 with the
publication of "Little Boy Blue" in America, a weekly journal,
that Field won immediate and long-lasting fame. The same issue of America carried
a poem by James Russell Lowell, "St. Michael the Weigher," and
it was a great satisfaction to Field that his "Little Boy Blue" was
more popular than the offering of an established poet. Field's poem is about
toys waiting on the shelf for their little owner who has toddled off to bed and
died in his sleep. While on lecture tours, Field was almost invariably asked
first to read this poem. He followed his success of "Little Boy Blue"
with a tremendous outpouring of poetry. He not only wanted his poetry well
received, but he also wanted to write much of it, and he did. A Little
Book of Western Verse was published in an edition of 250 subscription
copies in 1889, followed bySecond Book of Verse in 1892. During this
period Field also produced two volumes specifically about childhood: With
Trumpet and Drum (1892) and Love-Songs of Childhood (1894). With
Trumpet and Drum includes "The Sugar Plum Tree," "Wynken,
Blynken and Nod," "Little Boy Blue," and a selection of
lullabies and folk songs of different lands. Field had studied books of
children's writers from many lands, and he collected legends and folktales. Love-Songs
of Childhood includes "The Duel" (or "The Gingham Dog and
the Calico Cat") and "The Rock-a-By Lady." Much of his childhood
verse had been published in the Chicago Morning News or in
periodicals such as Youth's Companion and Ladies' Home Journal.
This verse established Field's reputation as the "poet laureate" of
children; it was well received during his lifetime, and some of it was included
in readers for much of the early part of the twentieth century.
Throughout his career, Field was well regarded
by his fellow journalists, and he had a wide circle of friends. His love of
pranks and flippant sense of humor, which caused him trouble in his school
days, made him popular as an adult, for the pranks were without intent to harm
and were the basis of much fun. Some of his privately printed ribald humor, Little
Willie and "Only a Boy," for example, was intended for male
audiences only; there was a major attempt by Anthony Comstock, representing the
Society for the Suppression of Vice, to ban this part of Field's work; Comstock
felt that it would tarnish Field's reputation as the "poet of
childhood."
With his brother Roswell, Field produced Echoes
from the Sabine Farm (1891), a modern and loose translation of Horace. At
the time of his death, he was working onThe House (1896), autobiographical
in nature, about the problems of a family moving into a new house (his own
Sabine Farm, which the Fields bought and moved into the year before his death). The
Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac (1896), also published just after Field's
death, is about his constant search for lovely books. Field treasured beautiful
books and had a library lined with rare and unusual volumes. He liked making
nice books himself and frequently worked diligently with various colored inks
decorating the first letter of a poem; he would then finish the verse in
compact script so as not to waste any strokes of the pen.
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of
crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going,
and what do you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish
for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we,"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
The old moon laughed and
sang a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped
them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were
the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful sea.
“Now cast your nets
wherever you wish,—
Never afraid are we!”
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
All night long their
nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam,—
Then down from the skies
came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home:
‘Twas all so pretty a
sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folk thought
‘twas a dream they’d dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea;
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
Wynken and Blynken are
two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that
sailed the skies
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while
Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the
beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen
three:—
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
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