Peter John Allan

Peter John Allan Poems

Peter John Allan Biography

Peter John Allan (June 6, 1825 – October 21, 1848) was a Canadian poet. Peter John Allan was born in York, England, the third son of Dr. Colin Allan and Jane Gibbon. Peter John Allan's father was Chief Medical Officer at Halifax before moving to Fredericton in 1836 upon his retirement. Growing up in Fredericton, Peter John briefly attended King's College but left before completing his degree. He then turned to the study of law. About the same time, he began to publish his compositions in the New Brunswick Reporter and Fredericton Advertiser, a local newspaper published by James Hogg. Allan began to plan the publication of a volume of poetry. He solicited enough subscriptions to underwrite the cost of publication and had completed the manuscript when he died suddenly in 1848 at Fredericton, following a brief illness. His poems were posthumously published in London in the summer of 1853 by his brother, and entitled The poetical remains of Peter John Allan. Influenced by the aesthetic concepts of the Romantic poets and especially by the style and versification of Lord Byron, Allan was able in his most effective poetry to break away from the moralistic attitudes and sentimental tone that had prevailed in locally written verse since the end of the 18th century. Allan was excited by the potential of man's imagination, by the range of experience that imagination offered to human consciousness, and by the relationship between the natural world and ideal reality, which only the imagination opened to human awareness. In his best poems, Allan used this intense sensitivity to ideal reality to control the rush of emotion he felt when confronted with the sensual beauty of nature. This control gave an intellectual toughness to his verse that was missing in the verses of contemporary Maritime poets such as Joseph Howe and Mary Jane Katzmann, who approached nature poetry by way of sentimentalism. The new note struck by Allan's verse was probably noticed by few. It had an immediate if muted effect on James Hogg's poetry, but it was not until the early verses of Charles G.D. Roberts and Bliss Carman that once again intellectual perception and emotional sensitivity were to be found in so subtle a balance in the poetry of Maritime Canada.)

The Best Poem Of Peter John Allan

Danae- A Fragment From Simonides

When now, above the fragile bark,
The howling tempest gathered dark,
And wide the foaming billows spread,
Danäe, wild with rising fears,
Her eyes bedew'd with bitter tears,
Round Perseus threw her arms, and said:-

'Thou durst not guess, O babe divine!
The griefs that rend this heart of mine;
Thou sleepest on thy mother's breast,
Nor knowest how weak a bark is ours,
Nor dread'st the angry ocean's powers-
The winds but lullaby thy rest.

'Wrapt in thy little cloak, my child,
Thou heed'st not the waters wild,
As o'er thy long dark hair they sweep;
My love, my life! if thou couldst see
Thy hapless mother's misery,
Those slumb'ring eyes would learn to weep.

'Yet sleep, my boy-I charge thee sleep,
And slumber thou, resistless deep,
And sleep ye, too, my many woes;
Oh! grant, great Jove, a mother's prayer,
My Perseus in thy mercy spare
(Rash wish!) to punish Danäe foes.'

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