Ernest Howard Crosby

Ernest Howard Crosby Poems

Ernest Howard Crosby Biography

Ernest Howard Crosby (1856–1907) was an American reformer and author, born in New York City. He was educated at New York University and the Columbia Law School. While a member of the State Assembly (1887–1889), he introduced three high-license bills, all vetoed by the Governor. From 1889 to 1894 he was judge of the Court of the First Instance at Alexandria, Egypt. He became an exponent of the theories of Count Tolstoy, whom he visited before his return to America; his relations with the great Russian later ripened into intimate friendship, and he devoted himself in America largely to promulgating Tolstoy's ideas of universal peace. His book, Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable (1899), was widely commended by such writers as Björnson, Kropotkin, and Zangwill. He was a vegetarian. He wrote: * Captain Jinks, Hero (1902) * Swords and Plowshares (1902) * Tolstoy and his Message (1903; second edition, 1904) * Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster (1904) * Garrison, the Non-Resistant and Abolitionist (Chicago, 1905) * Broad-Cast (1905) * Labor and Neighbor (1908))

The Best Poem Of Ernest Howard Crosby

Choir Practice

AS I sit on a log here in the woods among the clean-faced beeches,
The trunks of the trees seem to me like the pipes of a mighty organ,
Thrilling my soul with wave on wave of the harmonies of the universal anthem—
The grand, divine, eonic “I am” chorus.

The red squirrel scolding in yonder hickory tree,
The flock of blackbirds chattering in council overhead,
The monotonous crickets in the unseen meadow,
Even the silent ants travelling their narrow highway with enormous burdens at my feet—
All, like choristers, sing in the green-arched cathedral
The heaven-prompted mystery, “I am, I am.”
The rays of sunshine shoot down through the branches and touch the delicate ferns and the blades of coarse grass piercing up through last year’s dead leaves,
And all cry out together, “I am.”

We used to call upon all these works of the Lord to praise the Lord, and they did praise Him.
But now they praise no longer, for they have been taught a new song, and with one accord they chant the “I am.”

I too would learn the new music, and I begin hesitatingly to take part in the world-wide choir practice.
After all these quiet private rehearsals,
At last in my own place you may look for me also in the final, vast, eternal chorus.
And we, all of us, as you see us, are but mouth-pieces.
Who is it that behind and beneath sings ever through us, now whispering, now thundering, “I am”?

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