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206 The Kentucky Anthology Robert Burns Wilson “Lovingly, to Elizabeth, My Mother” Robert Burns Wilson, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1850 but moved to Kentucky in the 1870s, fell in love with the rivers and creeks and landscapes of central Kentucky and used them for his double calling of painter and poet. He was a much better painter than poet. Although acclaimed as an important nature poet, he wrote his best-known poem, “Battle Song,” in 1898 as a response to the Spanish sinking of the American battleship the Maine. As the final three lines of the first stanza demonstrate, he loved rhymes: “From ship to ship, from lip to lip, / Pass on the quick refrain, / Remember, remember the Maine.” The following sonnet on the loss of his mother is replete with his signature traits: archaic language, predictable images and rhymes, and unbridled emotion. h The green Virginian hills were blithe in May, And we were plucking violets—thou and I. A transient gladness flooded earth and sky; Thy fading strength seemed to return that day, And I was mad with hope that God would stay Death’s pale approach—Oh! all hath long passed by! Long years! Long years! and now, I well know why Thine eyes, quick-filled with tears, were turned away. First loved; first lost; my mother:—time must still Leave my soul’s debt uncancelled. All that’s best In me, and in my art, is thine:—Me-seems, Even now, we walk afield. Through good and ill, My sorrowing heart forgets not, and in dreams I see thee, in the sun-lands of the blest. 206 ...

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