The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State

Cotton Noe

354 The Kentucky Anthology Cotton Noe “Umbrella Jim” Cotton Noe was born in 1869 in Washington County near Springfield and attended Franklin College in Indiana, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago . After practicing law for several years, he became a professor and administrator, teaching at Williamsburg Institute, Lincoln Memorial University, and the University of Kentucky, where he was head of the Department of Education. He was made the first official poet laureate of Kentucky in 1926, an honor that he held until his death in 1953. “Umbrella Jim” is one of his popular, easy-to-read portrait poems. h Umbrella Jim, About the time I knew him best, Was probably somewhere between Thirty and forty years of age,— Tall and slim, A fellow of the Whistler type, With infinite depth of eyes Blue and ripe And healing as late June skies. Nobody ever would have guessed, Looking into that serene Countenance, That Jim was anything but a sage, And that is how I classified him at a glance,— That is in advance Of any information concerning him And his life’s romance; But Jim Was something vastly more Than just a sage. Whether from heritage Or long experience under the open sky, I can not tell, But like the recondite Tagore, 354 Elizabeth Madox Roberts 355 He was a poet as well, And a poet, high In Nature’s councils and lore, And intimate in her dreams, As birds and trees and streams Could testify. Still, so far as I know, Jim never wrote a line Of poetry in all of his career. But he read it everywhere,— In flaming columbine, In magic mistletoe, In Tennyson and Keats and Poe, In Shelley and Lanier,— He read it everywhere; In golden sheaf And falling leaf, In earth and sea and air. Once I heard a fellow say, Who really didn’t know Jim, “I can’t find an adequate synonym To express my contempt for such fellahs As him,— I mean that chap who fixes old umbrellahs,” Referring, of course, to Umbrella Jim. And Jim had that very day Repaired this man’s silk umbrella and charged him only a dime, Although it took a lot of his time He could have used in moving onward toward a warmer clime,— For Jim always went south in the fall Exactly like a migratory bird. I think he must have felt or heard The call And turned southward early in September, For I remember That he always reached our town with the grackle; And somehow I came to associate the cackle Cotton Noe 355 356 The Kentucky Anthology Of the blackbirds with Umbrella Jim. But nothing in my opinion, would have pleased him Better than just that. The only time I ever saw him lose his head Was once when a fellow, blind as a bat To everything that Jim was looking at, Cursed and said: “Why don’t you get a job and go to work!” It was a biting and unjust remark, And Jim resented it. His brow grew dark; He dropped his tinker’s kit, And gave his vest an angry jerk; But in a moment more was just himself again, As he looked up and saw a little wren Pirouetting from limb to limb, And flirting, it seemed to me, with Umbrella Jim. “I live my life,” said Jim, “The same as any other man. Somebody must fix parasols, and why not I? I serve as best I can. The millionaires play half the year And more; why not indulge my whim? I love the changing clouds against the sky; I love the landscape that the asters beautify; I love the song of streamlet flowing near; The figure and the rhyme of sonneteer; I love the poets in the open all the year.” He ceased to speak and opened up his old tool kit. I looked at him and then I looked in it, And saw a grimy volume once my favorite. Next day while I was playing golf and Jim Was sitting where he always loved to sit, Beside a stream, beneath an old elm tree, 1 placed my golf-ball on the tee And drove,— I drove it with terrific vim. And then I watched the fleck of white till it grew dim. Elizabeth Madox Roberts 357 Gaston exclaimed, “By Jove, That drive was certainly a dream!” Just as the ball dropped in the...