Charles Fenno Hoffman

Charles Fenno Hoffman Poems

Charles Fenno Hoffman Biography

Charles Fenno Hoffman (February 7, 1806 – June 7, 1884) was an American author, poet and editor associated with the Knickerbocker group in New York. He was born in New York City on February 7, 1806, the son of New York State Attorney General Josiah Ogden Hoffman and Maria Fenno Hoffman (1781-1823, daughter of John Fenno). When 11 years old, his leg was crushed by a boating accident and had to be amputated. He attended New York University and Columbia College. He was admitted to the bar at 21, though he practiced law only intermittently. In 1833 he led a group of other students in the Eucleian Society in establishing the Knickerbocker Magazine, which he edited for the first three issues before passing duties on to Lewis Gaylord Clark. In 1836, Park Benjamin, Sr. merged his New England Monthly Magazine with the American Monthly and hired Hoffman as editor, though he left to join the New York Mirror a year later. Hoffman's first book was A Winter in the Far West (1835), recounting his travels as far west as St. Louis, Missouri. It was followed by Wild Scenes in Forest and Prairie (1837) based on actual experiences in search of health. He wrote a successful novel, Greyslaer (1840), based on the murder of Colonel Solomon P. Sharp by Jereboam O. Beauchamp, known as the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy—an event that several writers, including Thomas Holley Chivers and William Gilmore Simms, also fictionalized. Hoffman's fame rested chiefly upon his poems, first collected in The Vigil of Faith (1842). Literary critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold that year dedicated twice as much space to Hoffman than any other author in his respected anthology The Poets and Poetry of America. Griswold helped Hoffman publish The Echo, another collection of poetry, in 1844. Hoffman was also popular for his songs. From a devoutly Lutheran family he nevertheless dealt with religious ideas in his writing from an inquisitive and open viewpoint. He became the editor of The New-York Book of Poetry, which first attributed A Visit From St. Nicholas to Clement Clarke Moore. Hoffman remained a successful editor and author throughout the 1840s. He officially began a new role as editor of the Literary World magazine on May 1, 1847. The weekly journal, which also included Evert Augustus Duyckinck and George Long Duyckinck, ceased publication in 1853.)

The Best Poem Of Charles Fenno Hoffman

Monteray

We were not many—we who stood
Before the iron sleet that day;
Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if but he could
Have with us been at Monterey.

Now here, now there, the shot it hailed
In deadly drifts of fiery spray,
Yet not a single soldier quailed
When wounded comrades round them wailed
Their dying shout at Monterey.

And on—still on our column kept,
Through walls of flame, its withering way
Where fell the dead, the living stept,
Still charging on the guns which swept
The slippery streets of Monterey.

The foe himself recoiled aghast,
When, striking where he strongest lay,
We swooped his flanking batteries past,
And, braving full their murderous blast,
Stormed home the towers of Monterey.

Our banners on those turrets wave,
And there our evening bugles play;
Where orange-boughs above their grave
Keep green the memory of the brave
Who fought and fell at Monterey.

We are not many—we who pressed
Beside the brave who fell that day;
But who of us has not confessed
He'd rather share their warrior rest
Than not have been at Monterey?

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