Royall Tyler

Royall Tyler Poems

Royall Tyler Biography

Royall Tyler (June 18, 1757 – August 26, 1826), American jurist and playwright who wrote The Contrast in 1787 and published The Algerine Captive in 1797. He wrote several legal tracts, six plays, a musical drama, two long poems, a semifictional travel narrative, The Yankey in London (1809), and essays. He frequently collaborated with his friend Joseph Dennie, including co-writing a satirical column which appeared in Dennie's newspaper The Farmer's Weekly Museum Born in Boston, Massachusetts to politician Royall Tyler and Mary (Steele) Tyler and christened William, Tyler attended the Boston Latin School and Harvard, where he earned a reputation as a quick-witted joker. He was also considered rather profligate, spending half his inheritance while in college. In addition to his late father's money, he also legally took his father's first name. After graduation, the young Royall Tyler briefly served in the Massachusetts militia under John Hancock during the abortive Rhode Island expedition. In late 1778, he returned to Harvard to study law, and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1780. He opened a practice in Braintree, Massachusetts, eight miles outside of Boston, and lodged with Mary and Richard Cranch. Mary was Abigail Adams's sister, and Tyler soon met the younger Abigail ("Nabby") Adams, for whom he began to nurse a deep affection. In a letter to her husband, Abigail Adams Sr. noted that despite having "a sprightly fancy, a warm imagination and an agreeable person," he was nonetheless "rather negligent in pursueing (sic) his business ... and dissipated two or 3 more years of his Life and too much of his fortune to reflect upon with pleasure; all of which he now laments but cannot recall." The relationship was broken off and Tyler fell into a depression. After a brief stint in suppressing the 1787 Shays's Rebellion, Tyler moved to Boston and boarded in the house of Elizabeth Palmer. Eventually, in 1794, he wed her daughter Mary Palmer, took her to his new home in Vermont, and with her had eleven children. In 1801, Tyler was appointed to the Supreme Court of Vermont as an assistant judge, and was later elected chief justice. In 1812 he ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate, losing due to a recent shift from being a Federalist to a Republican at a time when Vermont was controlled by the Federalists. He died in Vermont, of facial cancer that he had suffered from for ten years. Tyler has been identified as the model for Jaffrey Pyncheon in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne's wife was a descendant of Elizabeth Palmer, and her branch of the family preserved stories of Tyler's sexual misbehavior as a young man. Royall Tyler admitted to his youthfully arrogant and dissolute life, but only regretted the limitations which his seedy past placed upon his career and later ambitions. His illegitimate son Royal Morse (later a leader in the anti-Roman Catholic riots in Cambridge of 1834) was born in 1779 to Katharine Morse, a well-known "character", the sweeper and cleaning woman in the Harvard College buildings, the fact recorded by John Langdon Sibley, the long-time Harvard librarian and historian. According to descendants of his wife's sisters, Tyler fathered at least one daughter on Elizabeth Palmer while her husband, Joseph Pearse Palmer, was away from Boston. The girls in question were Sophia, born in 1786, and possibly Catherine, born in 1791. Tyler was also said to have had sexual relations with Mary Palmer before she was old enough to marry. Mary Palmer Tyler's own account says that for many months her neighbors believed that she had been impregnated out of wedlock, but that she and Tyler had actually married in secret. The main theater at the University of Vermont is named after Tyler.)

The Best Poem Of Royall Tyler

The Origin Of Evil: An Elegy

Of man's first disobedience and the Fruit
Of that FORBIDDEN TREE, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe:
Sing heavenly muse!

MILTON.
EVA.

Fructus ipse est pulcher sane visu:
Nescio an sit ita dulcis gustatu;
Veruntamen experiar. VAH. QUAM DULCIS EST!!!
DIALOGI SACRI SABESTIANI CASTALIONIS.
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! Pity swells the tide of love,
And will not the severe excuse a sigh?
Scorn the proud man who is asham'd to weep.

YOUNG'S NIGHT THOUGHTS

prologue

Proem

Ranting topers, midnight rovers,
Cease to roar your fleshy lays;
Melancholy, moping lovers,
No more your lapsed ladies praise.
Fix your thoughts on heavenly treasure,
Let Virtue now with Wit combine;
Purge your hearts from sensual pleasure,
With Religion mix your wine.
Let each lovely Miss and Madam,
Quit the dear joys of carnal sense,
Weep the fall of Eve and Adam,
From their first state of Innocence.

An ELEGY

In the first stillness of the even,
When blushing day began to close,
In the blissful bowers of Eden,
Our chaste Grand Parents sought repose.
No pair to act love's glowing passion,
So fit, in these late days, are seen;
Since girls' shapes are spoil'd by fashion,
And man's nerves unstrung by sin.
Eve, the fairest child of nature,
In naked beauty stood reveal'd,
Exposing every limb and feature,
Save those her jetty locks conceal'd.
Light and wanton curl'd her tresses
Where each sprouting lock should grow,
Her bosom, heaving for caresses,
Seem'd blushing berries cast on snow.
Adam, got by lusty nature,
Form'd to delight a woman's eyes,
Stood confest in manly stature,
The first of men in shape and size!
As Eve cast her arms so slender,
His brawny chest to fondly stroke;
She seem'd an ivy tendril tender
Sporting round a sturdy oak.
Innocent of nuptial blisses,
Unknown to him the balm of life;
With unmeaning, wild caresses,
Adam teaz'd his virgin wife.
As her arm Eve held him hard in,
And toy'd him with her roving hand,
In the middle of Love's Garden,
She saw the Tree of Knowledge stand.
Stately grew the tree forbidden,
Rich curling tendrils grac'd its root;
In its airy pods, half hidden,
Hung the luscious, tempting fruit.
With Love's coyest leer she view'd it,
Then touched it with her glowing hand;
Did just touch, but not renew'd it,
Restrain'd by the divine command.
At her guilty touch the tree seem'd
Against the blue arch'd sky to knock;
With nervous vigour every branch beam'd,
And swell'd the sturdy solid stock.
Softly sigh'd the rib-form'd beauty,
'How love does new desires produce?
This pendant fruit o'ercomes my duty,
I pant to suck its balmy juice.
'Why was this tall tree forbidden,
So sweet and pleasant to my eyes,
Food so fit for hungry women,
Much desir'd to make me wise?'
With sweet blandishment so civil
She finger'd soft its velvet pods;
'Let us now know good from evil,
Dear Adam, let us be like Gods.'
With burning cheeks and eyes of fire,
Raving and raging for the bliss,
Blushing and panting with desire,
She glu'd her glowing lips to his.
'Threaten'd death will soon o'ertake me,
If this forbidden tree I pluck,
But life itself will soon forsake me,
Unless its cordial juice I suck.'
Her soft hand then half embrac'd it,
Her heaving breasts to his inclin'd,
She op'd her coral lips to taste it,
But first she peel'd its russet rind.
In her lips she scarcely put it,
And nibbl'd 'till its sweets she found,
Then like eager glutton took it,
And, gorg'd with bliss, sunk on the ground.
At that hour, through all creation,
Rode Love sublime in triumph then,
Earth, Sea, Air, gave gratulation,
And all their offspring joy'd like them.
Fish that sported in the Gihon,
Soaring Eagles, cooing Doves,
Leopard, Panther, Wolf and Lion,
Reptile and Insect joy'd their loves.
Love's fierce fire seiz'd e'en the posies,
Which deck'd the gay enammell'd mead,
Amorous pinks and wanton roses,
Dissolv'd in love, all shed their seed!
Eve, transported beyond measure,
Stretch'd in every vital part;
Fainting with excess of pleasure,
For mighty knowledge rift her heart.
But when its nectar'd juice she tasted,
Dissolving Eve could only sigh;
'I feel-I feel, my life is wasted,
This hour I eat, and now I die.'
But when she saw the tree so lofty,
Sapless and shrunk in size so small;
Pointing she whisper'd Adam softly:
'See! there is DEATH! and there's the FALL!'

FINIS

Oh Fruit divine!
Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet THUS cropt.
MILTON.

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