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| Robert Frost in 1941 |
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The American poet Robert Frost spent some years as a (not very successful) "gentleman farmer," and filled his poems with imagery of rural life and nature, often using the colloquial speech of country people.
He considered the 1922 poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," a poem about the winter solstice, to be his "best bid for remembrance."
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| An 1862 illustration of "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" |
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Read a little more, including another vocabulary exercise, in Lesson #08-024.
"A Visit from Saint Nicholas"--better known by its first line, "'Twas the Night before Christmas"--was published anonymously in a newspaper in Troy, New York, in 1823. The author was later identified as Clement Clarke Moore, Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature at an Episcopal seminary. (These days, his authorship is disputed.)
This story is very, very old--dating perhaps to the time of the Buddha, around 500 BCE!--but the version here is a "modern," humorous poem by American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887). You can read more about it in my Lesson #08-133.
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| Virginia O'Hanlon as a young girl |
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Back in 1897, an eight year old girl named Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper, the New York Sun. The reply was written by reporter Francis Pharcellus Church, and published on Sept. 21 of that year.