Theodore Sedgwick Fay

Theodore Sedgwick Fay Poems

Theodore Sedgwick Fay Biography

Theodore Sedgwick Fay (February 10, 1807 - November 17, 1898) was a writer from the United States who spent much of his life in Germany. Fay initially worked as a clerk for his father, an attorney. His father died in 1825, and he continued long enough in law to be admitted to the bar in 1828, but he quickly left the legal profession for periodical journalism, where he made a name for himself for some years. To this period belongs his book Dreams and Reveries of a Quiet Man (2 vols., 1832), which contained papers he had written for the New York Mirror, where he was an editor beginning in 1828. He married Laura Gardenier in 1833, and went traveling in Europe for three years, while sending back articles to the Mirror. He served with ability in the United States diplomatic service, first as secretary of the legation at London briefly (1837), then at Berlin (1837–53), and next (1853–61) as Minister at Berne, Switzerland. He retired from his diplomatic career in 1861. He then moved to Berlin. His first wife died while he was at Berne, and he later married a German woman.)

The Best Poem Of Theodore Sedgwick Fay

New York

But see! the broadening river deeper flows,
Its tribute floods intent to reach the sea,
While, from the west, the fading sunlight throws
Its softening hues on stream, and field, and tree;
All silent nature bathing, wondrously,
In charms that soothe the heart with sweet desires,
And thoughts of friends we ne'er again may see,
Till lo! ahead, Manhattan's bristling spires,
Above her thousand roofs red with day's dying fires,

May greet the wanderer of Columbia's shore,
Proud Venice of the west! no lovelier scene.
Of thy vast throngs now faintly comes the roar,
Though late like beating ocean surf I ween-
And everywhere thy various varks are seen,
Cleaving the limpid floods that round thee flow,
Encircled by the banks of sunny green-
The panting steamer plying to and fro,
Or the tall sea-bound ship abroad on wings of snow.

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