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Edwin Carlile Litsey
- The University Press of Kentucky
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Elizabeth Madox Roberts 351 Edwin Carlile Litsey “To John Keats” Edwin Carlile Litsey was born in 1874 in Washington County; he grew up and lived the rest of his life in nearby Lebanon, in Marion County, where he worked in the Marion National Bank, first as a runner and later as a bank officer. He wrote romantic novels resembling those of Sir Walter Scott and composed verses that were much better, including the poem below, “To John Keats,” written in traditional iambic pentameter couplets. (An interesting footnote to Kentucky literary history is that John Keats’s brother George moved to the United States in 1818 and, after a year in Henderson, moved to Louisville, where he became a prosperous lumber merchant and spent the rest of his days.) h An hostler’s son! What boots the lowly birth When manger-born was King of Heaven and Earth! Pale-featured youth; father of deathless song; So frail of flesh, of spirit ever strong. At thy nativity the stars above Most surely sang for joy, and, sent by love, A white-winged messenger brought thee a lyre, And touched thy infant’s tongue with poet’s fire! O pity! pity! that the gods of ruth Should quench the flame immortal in thy youth! Almost a boy, for six and twenty years Are short enough to learn of hopes and fears; Of love, and life, and death, and heaven and hell, Whose mysteries and wonders thou didst tell. Thy dying fear was useless—“Here lies one Whose name was writ in water.”—’Neath the sun No name is more secure, John Keats, than thine, O hostler’s son, who sang with tongue divine! 351 ...