Isaac McLellan

Isaac McLellan Poems

Morn on the Summer Sea- the breaking light
Is trembling on the mountain's misty height,
And upland lea- and on the distant glen-
...

For other scenes their lights expand,
Out in the savage western land,
Where wildernesses lone and grand,
...

A noble sight is this, I ween,
Fair panorama of the sea,
The ocean white with crested foam
...

New England's dead! New England's dead!
On every hill they lie;
On every field of strife, made red
By bloody victory.
...

In Indian Ocean, or in seas
That dash their billows upon tropic isles,
Where the perennial, soft summer time
...

We cross'd a brawling mountain torrent, far
From our Indian camp. The red, angry glare
Of crimson sunset shimmer'd through the clouds
Of dust that fill'd the air with their dull, coppery hues,
...

Amid the wildernesses vast
That gird the Mississippi's shores,
'Mid woods whose shadows dense are cast
...

I ofttimes come to this lonely place,
And forget the stir of my restless race;
Forget the woes of human life,
The bitter pang and the constant strife,
...

October's flaming banners, of purple and of gold,
O'er all the bowery woodland, are flauntingly unroll'd;
From his o'er-brimming urn red Autumn pours his dyes
O'er all thy realm, Long Island, from clouds that sail the skies.
...

The brown chickadee still chirps on the tree,
Though it yields scanty wealth of larvae and bee,
Though its branches are stripp'd of blossom and leaf,
And shrill blows the wind with a murmur of grief.
...

The autumn day is fleck'd with gold,
As slow the twilight sun declines;
The western cloud's encrimson'd fold
With a surpassing beauty shines;
...

As a life-weary pilgrim sinks to his last repose,
The old year, pale and pulseless, swoons o'er the drifting snows;
He's gone to join the ages, in the past years laid away,
To sleep in time's mausoleum, until the judgment day.
...

Now the good old Year is dead and gone
To the grave of the Past, forever borne.
I heard last night his awful knell
...

(Pomatomus Saltatrix.)

It is a brave, a royal sport,
Trolling for bluefish o'er the seas;
Fair skies and soaring gulls above,
...

(Carcharias glaucus.)


The seaboy sailing o'er the main,
Far-gazing o'er the watery plain,
Sees oft the black fin of the shark
...

16.

In winter, when the snows lie deep
In shapeless hillock, drifted heap;
When thick the hollow vales they fill,
And woods are trackless on the hill,
...

Monarch of the realms supernal,
Ranger of the land and sea,
Symbol of the Grand Republic,
Who so noble and so free?
...

Isaac McLellan Biography

Isaac McLellan (21 May 1806-20 August 1899) was an author and poet, some of whose work has achieved notability by republication in anthologies. Isaac McLellan was born on 21 May, 1806 in Portland, Maine, the home town of his life-long friends, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Parker Willis. In early life, his father, Isaac McLellan, moved to Boston, where for many years he was a prominent merchant, distinguished for his integrity and success in business.Willis' parents also moved to Boston, and Willis and McLellan were schooled together at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. McLellan went on to Bowdoin College, where he was in the next class to Longfellow, Hawthorne, Cheever, and other distinguished writers. Boston life In 1826, he returned to Boston, completed a course of legal study, and was admitted to practice in the courts of that city. But literature had more charms for him than clients and briefs, and for many years he contributed, both in prose and poetry, to several magazines and papers published in the city and vicinity, and had the editorial management of two or three of them, including the Daily Patriot, the Daily Advertiser and the Weekly Pearl, formerly published by Isaac Pray. McLellan was in almost daily intercourse with Willis, at that time editor of the Boston Monthly Magazine, which took his contributions, as did the New England Magazine. In this period he wrote three well received volumes of poems, which were published by Allen & Ticknor, Boston. Only one poem in the collection "The Trout Brook", was on a sporting theme, and was picked out for notice by the editor of Slackwood's Magazine. The sporting life and Europe Yet before literature, and throughout McLelland's life, he had a passion for the gun and the rod which led him to devote the major portion of his later life to the sports of the field and the flood. During college days, he would hunt on Saturdays with a fellow student. His leisure time in Boston was dedicated to the sport of wild-fowl shooting upon the seacoast - this being the principal pastime of many New England sportsmen. About the year 1840, he went abroad, and passed somet two years in Europe. While there he shot and fished in many portions of the continent, and thus added to his critical observation of American game and shooting a practical knowledge of the field-sports of Europe. On his return, be gave a description of his journeyings, in a series of letters published in the Boston Daily Courier. For two years after his return he engaged in agricultural pursuits and the rural life. His passionate love for field-sports, and more especially wild fowl shooting, inspired him to write in prose and verse on sporting subjects; for this work, Willis and other distinguished writers have given McLellan the credit of being in several respects the finest poet in America. Genio C. Scott, who wrote on fly fishing, remarked that "McLellan is as a poet on field-sports what Gen. George Pope Morris was as a song-writer both unsurpassed in their way." Among the favorite shooting resorts he frequented were Cohasset, Plymouth, and Marshfield, Massachusetts, the latter being the rural home of the statesman, Daniel Webster. Through his courtesy, McLellan passed two seasons at Marshfield, dwelling at one of the farm houses belonging to Webster. Here he had an opportunity of seeing the great sportsman almost daily, enjoying his usual labors and his rambles with rod or gun. New York life In about 1851 McLellan moved to New York City, and there formed the acquaintance of the sporting celebrities of the day, who congregated at the old Spirit office, where William T. Porter presided one of the best-known, and, at that time, the most popular of all the editorial fraternity in the city. Here he met and became friends with the sporting author Henry William Herbert. During several years he passed a part of each season on the coast of Virginia and at Currituck Sound, North Carolina, where the water fowl were then very abundant. In later years he followed the sport of duck-shooting at the Shinnecock and Great South Bay, Long Island, where he has resided for some time, in close proximity to the finest resorts of wild-fowl. While in Virginia he contributed a valuable sketch to his friend Genio C. Scott's "Fishing in American Waters," and also supplied the poetical gems in that standard work. In later life he contributed occasionally to the sporting journals of the day - the Turf, Field and Farm, Forest and Stream, American Angler, etc., besides the Home Journal and other periodicals of high literary merit. His ardor for field-sports was unquenched by age. His closing years were spent at Greenport, Long Island. Here he died of exhaustion, due to old age, 20 August, 1899, aged 93 years, 2 months, and 29 days. He never married. Poetry Many of his later poems, consisting of nearly two hundred pieces, are descriptive of the larger game of Africa and Europe and comprise a valuable fund of sporting lore. They were brought together and published as Poems of the rod and gun; or, Sports by flood and field in 1886, a publication compared to kindred English works such as "The Chase", by William Somervile, and William Watt's "Remarks on Shooting". Wendell Phillips held McLellan in high estimation; and various collectors of American poetry, such as Griswold, Cheevers, Kettell, and others, all give his work a place in their pages)

The Best Poem Of Isaac McLellan

The Ocean

Morn on the Summer Sea- the breaking light
Is trembling on the mountain's misty height,
And upland lea- and on the distant glen-
And o'er the waters- far from haunts of men.

How faint and sweet from yonder secret dell,
Swells o'er the wave the early village bell,
Borne with the sounds of tinkling herds- and hark!
O'er the blue hills, the music of the lark
Rings clearly from the silver clouds that rest,
Like a bright Crown, above the mountain-crest.

O! green and happy land! whose headlands grey,
Are, in the distance, melting fast away;
Ye peaceful vales- the wanderer's own sweet home,
And ye old woods!- farewell.- The curling foam-
The boundless sea, with all its host of waves,
May dash ere evening o'er our lonely graves.

Thou dark, unfathomed Ocean! in thy halls
No searching glance of kindly sunlight falls-
Far through thy azure depths the sea-snakes sweep,
And the huge Krakens haunt thee- stormy deep!
Yet hast thou wealth of glorious things, far down
Thy hidden palaces- jewels and crown,
And the reich spoils of many a shattered bark,
Lie with thy Sea-Stars and the ocean shark;
And from thy many-twinkling sands, bright gems
Shine like the pearls in kingly diadems.
The broad Sea-Fag lies there- and tufts of green,
Oft through thy glassy depths are dimly seen;
And the Sea-Grape and yellow Fan o'erspread
Thy pathless empire- and the Coral's red
Glows mid thy snowy pebbles and rich sand,
And scarlet Shells that glisten o'er the strand.
- Sea! thou art full of life! things swift and strange
Through thy mysterious tides, half shapeless, range.

Noon on the flashing billows. All the day
We have gone lightly on our foaming way;
And the glad sun a tranquil smile hath sent
From his bright throne in yonder firmament.
Far on our lee, the giant Whales upturn
The boisterous water from the sea's full urn;
The storm-drenched Petrel curbs his tired wing,
To view awhile our rapid wandering-
And the blue Halcyon bends his gentle eye
On the strong ship that flies so gaily by-
The purple Mullets through our pathway sweep,
And the blue Dolphins in our white track leap.

O! boundless Sea! with thy upheaving surge,
Whitened with foam-wreaths to thy glorious verge;
With thy strong tides- thy multitude of waves-
And the wild voices of thy thousand caves-
And thy stern rage when tempests madden thee!
Fearful thou ever art, Eternal Sea!

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