49 CHAPTER 2
SOCIAL THEMES IN SARAH PIATT’S POEMS
Introduction
Literature is an expression of life and it mirrors the customs, traditions,
beliefs, religion, livelihood of people and their struggle at all historic periods. Among
so many such social ideas, Sarah Piatt’s treatment of certain themes with sociological
perspectives is worth noting. This chapter examines how Sarah Piatt’s poems exhibit
and unleash the various vital aspects like civil war, slavery, politics and religion, these
aspects were the major subjects of people during her time which actually affected her
mind and heart to indulge deeply in her poems. Through her poems she was able to
uncover the conflicts and struggles of all ages, both implicitly and explicitly and the
following is the documentation of critical study of her poems which portrayed the
major social events and themes of 19th century America.
Resurgence of the past and study of history is indispensable for the
development and creation of better tomorrows. This can be done in different
connotations and perspectives of geographical, sociological and economical
interventions. Such a survey would reveal one how the nations indulge in so many
wars, battles and struggles and how the governments set about to erase such conflicts
of people through authority and military command. In the American continent, such a
form of society had made a drastic change after a bloodshed and movement on
suffrage and the agony of the common people during the 19th Century.
Particularly, the abolishment of slavery played a crucial role among the other
social issues. The abolitionists of North tended to abolish slavery in total. This trend
of abolishing slavery had caused much degradation in the economical development of
the Southern American states. Thereby, the southern states rose against this, while the
50 slavery system had to be stretched out to eastern parts. The main cause for the
commencement of civil war between North and South was the economical difference
that was basically centered in the South by the slavery-system and its practice of it in
most of the Southern plantations. This labor of African slaves was based on the large
scale of farming to grow crops. It has been denoted that the southern parts of America
had deeply been enrolled in the slavery system as it was the backbone of their
economic growth. The Supreme Court’s ruling was announced to acknowledge the
legality of slavery in the territories. Only later, abolitionists like, John Brown’s raid at
Harper’s ferry in 1859 convinced the southerners to understand the fact that, the
Northern neighbors were in full-forced action against the slavery-system. Louis
Untermeyer (1881-1977) had denoted that “the South was under the military control
for not admitting it to be differentiated from the Union of America. This resulted in
the gruesome civil war and secession between North and Southern States.”
To the general reasoning over the crusades of the Civil War (1861 – 1865) of
19th century America was primarily rooted in the subject of slavery system
maintained by the Southern lands. There were numerous reasons for the birth of rebel
of slaves and this was considered as inseparably intervened with state rights, the
control of the federal government over the people, and the South’s way of life and the
inhuman treatment of slaves by the owners. Moreover, the Southern sections of the
United States remained a predominantly agricultural economy with the help of Slaves
while Northern states had been industrialized and were taking in different cultures and
political opinions. All of these led to discrepancies on issues such as taxes, tariffs and
internal improvements as well as states’ rights versus federal rights.
The horror of American Civil War, had killed of 6, 18,000 and according to
experts nearly 7, 00,000 to 1,100,000 soldiers and killing of civilians certainly had its
51 impact on literature and writers and poets. Many of the writers lived through it and
many more were the eye witnesses to the civil war. It froze their attention and focus
and directed them to their creative visions. The war became an inspiration to many,
especially they were enchanted by the brutal battle scenes and they were compelled to
make such scenes in their writings in an imaginary way or in realistic prospects. Some
authors chose to glorify war and its heroes, whereas many chose to picture the cruel
gruesome side of the war and its impact of destruction over American people and their
culture.
Many great literary works of art were birthed through this. Along with the
great literary giants like Emerson, Whitman, Melville and Thoreau there were many
who wrote being in the civil war which influenced the people. To cite a few are
Elizabeth Akers Allen’s’, “ In the Densest”, “ The Dying Words of Stone mole
Jackson” written by Sidney Lanier, Thomas Buchanan Read’s “Sheridan’s Ride” and
famous, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1857. This splendid work
broke the oppressive silence pervading about the slavery. It was the most influential
book which popularized the horror of slavery and it aided in passing of the Fugitive
slavery Law in 1850.
The inclination would not be complete without noting the great “Gettysburg
Speech” articulated by the President Abraham Lincoln in 1861, which restored peace
and orderliness to the hearts of the citizens over the country. Julia Ward Howe, a
poetess wrote the famous poems like “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Glory
Halleluiah” which became an unofficial anthem of the union army. As a social
reformer she fought for woman suffrage and she supported abolition of slavery.
52 Sarah Morgan Dawson’s “A Confederate Girls’ Diary” is yet another work of
art on civil war written by a woman writer. Her book traces the war-torn New
Orleans, while she pines and mourns for her carefree antebellum life.
In this line Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt can also be included who was moved
and impacted by civil war. In her poems the reminiscences of the civil war, the impact
of war on women and soldiers can be traced.
Themes on Civil War and Its aftermath
As the end of Civil War South had started their dependency on North to have
industrial growth with the available raw material. By 1805 the oppression of the
landlords over small farmers of the South and West had also been resisted in
continuation of the abolition of slavery. The National Farmers’ Alliance’s progressive
objective was to wage a crusade for white supremacy and the People Party’s demand
for a series of reforms made political changes for heading nation too. The headship of
Abraham Lincoln and the untiring effort of the abolitionists, and eastern Writers’ and
Poets’ contribution to the unity and nationalistic feeling made people of both South
and North to be united for the cause of freedom and nationalism, despite the open
wounds and unsettled scores of the Civil War.
At the opening of Civil War John James Piatt married Sarah at the age of 25.
She spent 21 years together with her husband during and after the Civil War before
leaving to Ireland as her husband’s nature of the job changed from America to Ireland
(1882-1911). She had written some fair number of poetry on Civil War and slavery. It
could not be possible to search the fact if Sarah Piatt had social status and she had
tried to give voice for the freedom of slaves through her writing. But, her concern and
being sympathetic towards slaves especially primarily of her own nursing African
maid had been expressed with an aesthetically mingled realistic view in her poems.
53 May be Sarah Piatt’s race and class privilege could have been the reasons why she
had not let herself much involved in bringing out the deadly effects of the Civil War,
and its aftermath, as the effects of war was deeply denoted by other writers of
American social realism.
There were more than fifteen of her poems which have the direct impact of
Civil War and in some poems traces of other war effects could be found. P.B Bennett
commented on Sarah Piatt’s Civil War poems as following: “As a native born
Kentuckian and daughter of slaveholders, Piatt brought to her Civil War poetry a
political subjectivity formed and articulated in the borderland separating north from
South. Highly intelligent and fiercely honest, Piatt used the (following) poetry to
explore a set of concerns that ran the gamut of the Principal social issues of her day:
slavery, the war itself, ‘the myth of the lost cause, the displacement of Southern
African-Americans, bourgeois corruption in the North, social and economic
inequalities in the post-bellum period, changing gender and social values, and the
dubious judgments of God.” (128)
“Sara Piatt is one of the profound realist poets, increasingly recognized as a
major American poetic voice, although her name was unknown until just a few years
ago,” says Elizabeth Renker (131). P.B Bennett describes that Sarah Piatt’s dramatic
poems are ‘dialogue based realist lyrics’ (Bennett xxxv). In this poetry Sarah
represents a speaker and leaves the rest to the reader’s imaginative perception over the
characters in order to understand and correlate the voices to the fitting assimilation of
the thematic aestheticism. Her poetry speaks multiplicity for the multiple perceptions.
In this poetry, Piatt settled her hidden motif of looking for a word which was lost
before a century on the turn of the Civil War.
54 Bennett is of the opinion that in ‘Giving Back the Flower’, a soldier-lover’s
nature of death at the battle field shows the hardship of the war field effects, such as;
Or perhaps He had gone to the ghastly field
Where the fight had been that day,
To number the bloody stabs that was there, to look
At and judge the dead;
He died out of chest wound in the war. This same soldier lover’s presence was seen in
many poems (164). In ‘The Memorials’ the repetition of ‘Hear me, Norma!’ in both
‘Giving Back the Flower’ and in ‘The Memorials’ (159), it’s evidently seen. In the
memorials she described the dead soldier and his offering of flower as a token of love
even after his death on the battlefield, kept by the lady love (the speaker of the poem);
…. But - I’ll keep the flowers,
Tho’ they grew in this poisoned world of ours. (160).
The mortality of dead soldier’s presence will not be brought back despite the feeling
and painful remembrance after the death. She used the image of a vibrant soldier and
his guitar and now their guitars are quiet and silenced by death. When one plays
guitars with starting music and that silence, it would not make the ‘still guitars’ and
they would not be brought back to life.
Startling and music. Hush the strain;
The dead will not come back
To wake the voice of their still Guitars—
So, hush the stain, and shade the stars,
With the close blinds from my weary sight,
For I cannot bear their haunted light,
Since the dead will not come back again; (160).
55 ‘A Hundred Years Ago’ is a poem of recollection of the past. In each stanza the glory
of the past, and the events which took place in the speaker’s life, have been expressed
in order to give a different flavour to each theme portrayed in each stanza. The refrain
‘A Hundred Years Ago’ comes at every end of the stanza to remind the reader to
engross into the meaning of the poetry with the sense of expression with a hundred
year’s back situation. It looks like a monologue in narrating to the audience with the
desolation of losing all the hundred years’ old ‘Bright sands’, ‘world full of dew’, ‘
wide beauty’, ‘flush’d silence’ (as opposite to the war effect!) etc. These descriptions
fill in the first two stanzas only celebrating the past. On the contrary, as it describes
the world marred by the violence of civil war from the latter stanza to the end of the
poem, it is too monotonous to read.
The Civil War, which was the cause of reason and that made the same world of
bright sand, full of dew, wide beauty and ‘flushed silence to become ‘No child’s
sweet grave’, ‘rose buds torn (away)’, ‘most bitter winds’ fall and blow’ (set her to be
in freezing loneliness). And, not even a phantom stars’ presence made her feel as
accompanied by. The speaker’s dream to go back in that hundred years to feeling the
‘fair, full of dew, wide beauty with the flushed silence – world’, is revealed in the
sixth stanza;
But what shall take me where I dream I was
A hundred years ago? (23-24).
The effect of civil war made her come with astounding characters of Nature, and
described the common nature of the moon on its settling as ‘weird’ with human touch
and feel. That day’s end might have been ‘weird’ one so as to make her leave such
phrase out of her personal identification with that of the moon. The expectation of
peace of the world is the only longingness of the author at the final stage of her
56 expression. If that could be possible to wipe out her hollowness to fill with something
‘divine’ to her life she found it a hundred years before as;
Ah, would I care to look beyond the shine
Of this weird-setting moon, if I could know
The peace that made my nothingness divine
A hundred years ago?
The question mark at each end of the final two refrains of ‘A Hundred years ago’
shows the speaker’s restless feeling of agony about the past events which had
shattered the whole world into non-stoppable state. It has created a clear image of the
onlooker and also the faithful representation of her inner feelings of having a
peaceful, fair land as she found it before a century!
In the poem entitled ‘The Grace at Frankfort’ published in Cap 2:43;1 in
December, 1872 the speaker of the poem is found to be known of her closeness to the
dead soldier, who had been rude and being from dark, bloody ground of war. The war
field effects had left some marks of scars on him like ‘oozing/sprinkling of blood’.
The use of ‘pun’ giving phrases like ‘who did not need the glitter of mock stars’ (line
6), ‘A wish to touch the hand that gave my rose’ (16), and, ‘I recognized at once the
rose he wore!’ (20), are all having remarkable and suspicious thoughts over the close
approximation towards the soldier.
Bringing out of lost fame of a writer like Sarah Piatt, especially, from the
feminist consciousness of American literary soil on the dried seasoning of 21st century
writing of poetry with aestheticism, became mandatory since these were rare poems
of real or separate and authentic poetry of aestheticism, transcendental. It could be in
the case of literally rich nation and eastern nations like Russia, China and India too. In
the west, the industrialism occupied the continent and focused on the development of
57 industry and was economically bound to the needs of the commercialized thoughts of
rulers and government authorities. Osho, a spiritualist says that, “It has to be
negotiated whether there are poets born, notably after Shelley in the West, and Tagore
in South Asia. No one can compete with works of Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Garky, Fyoder
Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and Turgenev” (Osho 101). Both post-bellum period of
America and the Post World wars I and II, left the rest of the world with notable
changes in the frameworks of total past and toiling present in the dilemma of having
enmity and power mongering senses of East and Asian parts of the world.
But, during the nineteenth century and its then eras, through literary
contributions of playwrights, novelists and poets, the history had been speaking out.
The histories of writing and historical writing have been turned forgotten. In this
realistic lyric and through the intellectual speaker’s voice, Piatt tried to unveil her
inner feeling and motif of agony towards dear known’s ‘passing’. Her phrases on deep
remorse and enrooted feelings of the loss became flaring to pour out the agony. She
expressed her sad feeling about ‘the meaning of the offering of the wedding ring’ (?).
This realist poetry offers a pedagogically effective framework was not only for
grappling with post-bellum poetry itself, but also helping the readers to understand the
cause and effect of war. This has been brought out through the effective portrayal of
inner voice by allowing the romanticism of the event of this poetry, which is a little
persuasion over the reality;
I left his dust to dew and dimness then,
Who did not need the glitter of mock stars?
To show him homely generalship to men
And light his shoulders through his troubled wars.
58 Long back, the intention of the persona of the poem to touch the hands that offered
the rose as the token of expressing liking was expressed as below. Whether the nature
of feeling through the phrases the author used as “withered springs”, “whirl of
shows”, “vague half-fever” are either the inner or the natural! This leaves the wonder
on negotiation for getting into either one. Sarah Piatt may be out of her dissatisfaction
over the married life let the speaker of her poem to have the wish of recalling the past
events by which she might have had her hidden interest in the past. It’s expressed here
as;
Ah, that was many withered springs ago;
Yet once, last winter, in the whirl of shows,
A vague half-fever, or, for ought I know,
A wish to touch the hand that gave my rose,
The descriptions of the hunter made lover who offered the rose was defined in the
following as;
Showed me a hunter of the wooded West,
With dog and gun, beside his cabin door;
And, in the strange fringed garments on his breast,
I recognized at once the rose he wore (Bennett, 27).
“‘One from the Dead’ provides notable evidence of Piatt’s sometimes uncanny ability
to capture the visual effects of bourgeois emotional life, as the accompanying
illustration demonstrates” (Bennett 165). And, the soldier’s end is described with
much intensified prediction of wounds caused out of civil war effects. He was dead
and it was too painful for the old woman to think of him. The wound caused by war is
markedly observed with the emphatic feeling of the speaker of the poem;
Yes, yes! It is nine years, you say?
59 There is his portrait. He was handsome. Yes!”
His mother’s mother kept her eyes away,
But pointed up, and I could guess. (23)
The loss of soldier-son left his home haunted with emptiness from his absence;
He was remembered in his room:
Of him pet window-flowers, in odours, dreamed;
His shut piano, under their sad bloom,
The coffin of dead music seemed.
The deeply stained body had received a heavy shot as an offering of the failure of the
war and caused a deadly feeling of the loss through the speaker’s voice as;
His vain-plumed hat was there; there, too,
The sword, whose bitter cause was never gained:
The coat, with glimmering shoulder-leaves, shot through
The breast, I think, and fiercely stained.
The sense of associating the expression of the author’s pain on seeing the wounded
soldier lover, it seems a greater loss and very pathetic to look on. It is told by
Hoffman that, “It is felt from the reading of the poem along with that of the personal
life events of the speaker (if Sarah herself) leave some unfair and unnecessary
impression over the relationship of marital life of Sarah Piatt and her husband John
James Piatt” (102). From his study on Piatt’s treatment of civil war he observes that
“the non-canonical writer, Sarah Piatt depicts war and the memory of it from a white
woman’s point of view, a woman excluded from the front but living close to it.” In his
explorative study on the status of Sarah Piatt, he clearly mentions that Sarah was
living (as Southerner) very close to war and its ongoing effect yet she was distanced.
This could also be seen in many of her poems such ‘The Black Princess’.
60 As suggested by Hoffman a study may be conducted on civil war verses to
understand the four different views of civil war poets like Walter Whitman, Emily
Dickinson, Sarah Piatt and Herman Melville. ‘Melville, being a Northerner came to
know about war largely through news’ (Hoffman 102). ‘One From the Dead’, like
many of Sarah Piatt’s poems speaks the war events and effects very diligently with
the spot light on creating a homely atmosphere to her supportive means; ‘As with
Melville’s war poetry, Sarah Piatt’s deft manipulation of point of view and prosodic
form allows her to make irony of popular conceptions of the fighting, as she provides
details of its impact on those who are on the frontline and the home front’. Hoffman
says that, “In her verse, Piatt recuperates the experience of those marginalized in and
by the war, and interrogates the certainties about war that pervaded poetry in her day.
Like Melville’s, her civil war poetry does a different kind of cultural work than most
aiming to undeceive us about the nature of war and its aftermath as well about the
ideologies that shaped events” (108).
The date on which the civil war broke out was also captured by the title of her
poem ‘Hearing the Battle --- July 21, 1861’ the speaker of the poem, had heard the
sound of the war:
--- from afar
We heard the solemn echoes
Of the first fierce words of war.
(Bennett 2).
There were some signs from this poetry like ‘Lay dim in the beautiful night’ (line 12)
shows about the ‘Bull Run’ (as the first battle to the South) (Bennett 163) to have
coincidence of the ethics of war in Southern America, usually identify with the phrase
‘Native Red Indians’. Because, in the daylight, the war would be engaged with full
might and in the dusk the war will come to an end, to have a fresh start in the daylight
61 again as the south Indian Tamil Kings’ traditional way of conducting war. While
coming to the prime discussion, the opening of the civil war was held on 21st July,
1861. Every evening, the ‘silence’ of war was observed. The war provided both
‘warm’ to fight with ease at one side and the ‘moan’ at the other;
And of souls, at morning wrestling
In the dust with passion and moan (Bennett 4)
And, it was unheard from the distanced world, like the southern part of America;
So far away at evening’
In the silence of worlds unknown (4)
The hearts of the people/soldiers were broken at the war field. Every soldier had
involved in the divided feelings and thought of South and North;
-----; I shall never know
How the hearts in the land are breaking,
My dearest, unless you go (4)
Bennett predicted it as, “the civilians of the capital, where the war was held, could
ride out to observe it, because the battle was fought so close to the capital (2001, 163).
Hoffman comments that, “the departure / of death of the beloved one was denoted in
the last stanza as the mourning of a soldier’s wife” (109);
And I gave you a spray of the blossoms,
And said: ‘I shall never know
How the heart in the land are breaking
My dearest unless you go (109)
PB Bennett compared the writing of Sarah Piatt and her husband’s and had dealt with
Piatt’s personally sensitive expressions having sometimes inadequate courtesy on
judging it.
62 The invocation to the ‘Watcher (of the world)’ to seize the war expresses
Piatt’s intention of looking for peace which would be seen in the second stanza;
Ah, tell me, thou veiled Watcher
Of the storm and the calm to come,
How long by the sun or shadow
Till these noises again are dumb. (Bennett 2)
Like other war poems, both ‘Another War’ and ‘The Mock Diamonds’ express the
theme of war with an inclusion of child (in Another War) to take part in war and die;
the adult man with a scar (in the Mock Diamonds).
In ‘Another War’ the writer brings out an intense desire to take part in the war.
Rather, her child could not make it. The writer does not have another child to send to
the war field because she has already sent two of her sons to take part in the war. The
ambition to meet the victory is expressed in the following stanza;
Then not my boy, it seems, but I
Would wage another war? --- to see
The shining sights, to hear the cry
Of ghostly victory?
The recollection of old war effects is necessary to justify the writer’s need for not
having anymore war in future. It could be drawn and said as follow;
No ---for another war could bring
No second bloom to wither’d flowers,
No second song of birds that sting,
Lost tunes in other hours!
There are many causes for civil war like, (as referred in ‘The University of North
Carolina’s ‘Documenting the American South: The Southern Home front, 1861-1865
63 documents southern life during the Civil War) the unfair taxation states’ rights and the
slavery issue. The aftermath effect of the Civil War left families divided, as parents
and children or brothers and sisters found themselves on opposite sides. One such
record is registered in Sarah Piatt’s ‘There was a Rose’ (1874);
But a million marching men
From the North and the South would arise?
And the dead – would have to die again?
And the woman’s widowed cries
Would trouble a new the skies? (Piatt 16)
During the Civil War, The impact of the loss of dear and near made the author felt bad
and ‘heavy’ in her heart and soul. She also lost a dearly loved one and in this poem it
is represented in the form of ‘a rose’ – which is so beautiful and never seen before so
beauty as rose. The agony of the author flows as;
No matter. I would not care;
Were it not better that this should be?
The sorrow of many the many bear, --Mine is too heavy for me.
And I want that rose, you see! (16)
From Hoffman’s view, in ‘There was a Rose’ the speaker has desired to recover a
lover (represented as the rose) who was killed in the war, even if it means reliving the
deaths of all soldiers and reactivating ‘the woman’s widowed cries.’ There is no
solace found in the transfiguration of compensation, only pain and anger and longing,
as the speaker strips war of all of its romantic ideologies, with victory appearing
‘Ghostly’. (Hoffman 112).
64 The elegiac sense and prediction of it through the loss of dearly loved one is
also expressed in poems like ‘One from the dead’, which leave hints to the often –
mentioned soldier-lover’ of the speaker of Piatt’s many poems;
What more? If one, with voice and breath,
Had given to one a rose-geranium bud,
And changed with moons, and vanished into death
In far-back tends of hate and blood. (Bennett 25).
Sarah Piatt’s poems on Civil War allow the reader to understand the causes and
consequences of war with the past century’s conflicts and struggles, as they fought
present offering for not leaving them all as an utter delusion against one’s own blood
and flesh. Rather, it serves for the present to unveil the reasons by which the
American social customs were made existential out of heavy loss and heroic deeds of
the people of South and North. Like, Melville’s writing, Sarah Piatt’s had also served
as indisputable means from the literary phase in portraying the realism of the past one
hundred and more years. Through that tough and troubled path the modern people
emerged into new, sophisticated life styles. Only when there is retrospection over the
past with any one’s self involvement to feel for the loss and gain of the past, the
present would serve the means with the worth of paying for it.
Sarah Piatt’s treatment on Civil War could be aptly quoted from Hoffman’s
concluding lines of his study;
Just as contemporary Civil War reenactments on the battlefield seek to
remember and honour, so too every time we read a poem produced by the war,
we are put into the position of re-enactor. We are called on to remember, to
revive the past in terms of the present, to review that literature in the light of
our own experience of war and the moral questions that war raises.
65 Reactivating these poems pints as to a deeper understanding of ourselves—of
our relations to others, of the codes that guide our conduct, and of our capacity
for bearing and relieving ‘great after-grief,’ as Piatt puts it in ‘One from the
Dead’ (Hoffman 119).
Poems on politics
Sarah Piatt’s political voice is rarely seen with much inspiration for provoking
notable changes in the political events and status. In her poems ‘The Palace Burner’
and the ‘Beatrice Cenci’ are much discussed for the core themes. In these two poems,
the role of women has been used as representation of the contemporary woman's
voice against some of the social disharmony. Basically it was the era of conventional
Victorian by the base, and Sarah Piatt had let her woman voices to be emerged from
representing social events’ tone to the base. The woman represented a shadow of the
speaker person in ‘The Palace Burner’ who’s with her rebellious thought burns the
palace. In the ‘Beatrice Cenci’ it's portrayed as the woman (a daughter) who murders
her own father. Sarah Piatt represented her agony and interest in choosing such
controversial events during her period as main characters of her poems.
In this discussion, the political themes of Piatt are given lime light to show her
both a social thinker and a realist from her part of producing the controversial political
events with a daring encounter in addressing them to the readers of her contemporary
era. It is denoted that, during her era, the woman was used as the subject matters of
writing, representing the aestheticism. However, Sarah Piatt daringly attempted to
capture a different picture of version of woman who is under suppression and out of
focus, and held her superior qualities up to resist the corrupt society. Piatt’s ‘The
Palace Burner’ and the ‘Beatrice Cenci’ are two important poems, which represented
the social events with pictorial and dramatic forms. Sara Smilko says that ‘Beatrice
66 Cenci’ examines the limits of artistic representation by re-staging the historical figure
of Beatrice Cenci…” (Smilko 1). Matthew Giordano says that, “‘The Palace Burner’
is one of several Piatt poems, including ‘Playing Beggars’, ‘A Neighbourhood
Incident’ and ‘A Night-Scene from the Rock of Cashel, Ireland’, Sarah Piatt’s
complexly empathizes with the victims of class and social inequalities” (Giordano 7).
Renker is of her view says that, “Piatt’s realism represents the phenomena of
American Post bellum culture with a great accuracy; the concentricity of the public
social world, the private domestic realism, and the interior workings of
consciousness” (Renker 132). Indeed, ‘The Palace Burner’ aptly falls into ‘The
concentric of the public social world category. ‘To domestic ideology’s idealized
elevation of female morality, ‘The Palace Burner’ holds up a mirror wherein
bourgeois domesticity reveals itself as a pernicious form of a political narcissism”
declares Bennett (220). She also says that, through this poem, Piatt consistently
addressed an issue of ‘Woman’s place’ in the modern world, making the formation of
middle class woman’s subjectivity…” (221). Sarah Piatt, having been in domestic
conventions in ‘The Palace Burner’, represents political sense. Giordano admires Piatt
for engrafting as it is ‘an incisive political commentary onto a poem in which one
might be least to expect it, one that is situated in the genteel and domestic conventions
of nineteenth century poetry” (Giordano 12).
Sarah Piatt’s political poems were not much reachable to her contemporary
era, since there were only a couple of poems such as ‘The Palace Burner’ and
‘Beatrice Cenci’. ‘Beatrice Cenci’ had given emphasis to the theme of political
rivalry. Between these two themes of political rivalry and racial problem, ‘the racial
problem due to the slavery system which maintained by the southern American
plantation owners was the crux of all major political changes through the Civil War in
67 America. ‘Our old and New Land Lords—1869/70’ of Piatt is an apt example, in
summarizing 1869’s major political events; says Bennett in her ‘The Place Burner’
Selected poems of Sarah MB Piatt” (164-11). She also denoted that, the political
events include, the opening of the Suez Canal; the completion of the transcontinental
rail road in the United States; Spain’s brief experiment with elective monarchy; the
First Vatican Council, called to ratify the doctrine of papal infallibility; and,
representing women’s ongoing struggle for the franchise, the 1869 woman’s rights
convention in Saratoga, New York, the internal state affairs are expressed in the first
four stanzas of the poem. The fifth and sixth stanzas are about the external affairs of
Spain and Rome, respectively; the ‘Right of Suffrage’ and gender ideologies are
focused in the last couple of stanzas. The lines which follow beneath denote the
events of politics.
Her experience of travelling to the Old East, Grand Canal and consideration of
the Kings activities are something interesting as sealed and inactive. This shows the
end of the regime of kingships. The modernity of West through the invention of
railways and the fast growing technologies are noted as;
For Travel I have done some handsome things;
The old East has her Grand Canal at last,
Whose plan winds vaguely to her spice-sealed kings?
The West on her new Railway Journeys fast. (9-12)
The unwillingness to be present in churches and the living place was considered as
not worth to continue to live in. It is expressed in the following lines;
And Church and state – but I’ll not make a speech!
For church and state are bitter at the best. “(15-16)
“Now as for Spain and all her castles – well,” (17)
68 “Then, Rome—why should I worry about Rome?
The Holy Father is – infirm, I say,
And needs grave council at St. Peter’s dome,
Where let him keep his Chamber while he may. (19-22).
She had proven the universal quality of the poetess through third-person narration by
bringing gender issues to light, politically;
We want the Right of Suffrage, that is what!
They answered, with a scornful, mighty noise (43-44).
The use of phrases like, ‘Adjective’, ‘beautiful’ in the previous stanza to the
oppressed women had shown the narcissistic feel of the author for using romance to
be slightly intervened in bringing the answer to the women’s nature, who were on the
streets to claim for their voting rights.
The role of writer had given Sarah Piatt controlled, multidimensional
perspectives and explorative sense, which are the denotable features among other
qualities. Sara Smilko, in her manuscript copy, “Brokenly Read”: Aesthetic (Mis)
Representation in Sarah Piatt’s ‘Beatrice Cenci” (SSAWW, 2006), commented that
“Sarah manifested her view on the theme of this poetry in two different but inter
related angles. ‘The vacillation between a mother and child paradigms is paramount.
It is ultimately a poem which evidences both the aesthetic object’s ability to form
reality, and the power of reality to be nothing more than a romantic distance from the
real”…... And, it is found worthy to bring the narrated story of Beatrice by Sarah
Smilko, in this discussion to rely on the theme of the poem with no hindrances to
relate it to the political perspective too, rather than to consider the theme of the poetry
only with mother-child paradigm: “Beatrice Cenci, was a historical figure and her
popularity within the nineteenth century is notable even after three centuries. She was
69 a sixteenth century Roman, beheaded along with three other family members, under
the orders of Pope Clement VIII in 1599 for having her maniacal father murdered.
The three stanzas poem with its combination of many political events which
had taken part in different centuries and places provides unification in the upshot of
the poetry, which exactly was possible to predict only through ‘pre-learnt’
information. During the classical period, the murals and pictures were becoming the
most outspoken mediums to convey the social events to the vexation of the public.
The image of ‘Beatrice Cenci’ which was visualized in a city shop window had served
to the nub of the poetry which was unexpressed through word form rather left hints
only through the title and the research of the youngster towards the female parent. The
brace of interrogations of the child look less mature as from the child’s premature
experiences. Rather, they could be taken as of the mature persona of the poem. Even
so the speaker could be the poetess herself and she had been in her narcissism in her
poems, frequently. Sarah could have been in child’s part too.
The ‘Beatrice Cenci’ was a politically motivated one of the author’s
perception. The aspiration of the author to be with the character, ‘Cenci’ was notable.
the social event this was either staged as a dramatic event or shown as rebel’s picture
to the general public to be cognizant of the society. By doing so, the author had also
been impacted much with the visual aspect of ‘Beatrice Cenci’. Piatt had denoted in
some famous poems she showed the same sensation in this slice of poetry too and had
the poem be spoken much with the political sound:
A South-look of sweet-sorrowful eyes, a trace
Of prison paleness…. (71)
Piatt described beauty here as ‘sweet, sorrowful eyes’ and ‘with ‘ a trace of prison
paleness’ in contradiction to this, or to equate the meaning of these phrases, in the
70 final stanza beauty of women was seen in some far-off places who died so long ago. It
was shown as an examination of the child;
… Is it the picture rail, though---?
And why the beautiful ladies, all, you know,
Live so far off, and died so long ago? (73)
The private domestic realm became the public social event in the case of Beatrice
Cenci. The multiple time frames of it get to the poems with allusion to the characters
like Beatrice Cenci, who existed as a historical persona between 1577 and 1599, who
murdered her father Francesco Cenci (1549-98). She polished off her father with the
aid of her brother and the lover, since she was put behind the bars along with her
stepmother in a column. Guido Reni’s portrait of Beatrice Cenci was hung in the
Barberini Palace, which was much copied in the nineteenth century. Later, Beatrice
Cenci was used as the heroine of Shelley’s verse drama ‘The Cenci’ (1819). The other
one was an imaginary actress who played Beatrice Cenci’s role in the drama. The
matured questions and philosophic expressions make the reader identify the speaker’s
semi-autobiographical events with the social issues:
When Guido’s hand could never reach the grave
That Glimmered on me from the Italian air—
Fairness so fierce, or fierceness half so fair?
And,
Darkness and Death and Agony crouch low
In old-time dungeons:
In the shell of ‘The Palace Burner’, the historical context for the poem is the Paris
Commune of 1871, an insurrection in the class of which rebels burned the ‘Tuileries
Palace’, according to Bennett “She places the speaker as a political rebel on one side
71 as the one who burnt the palace and a politically distant on another side”.(56)
The opening of the poem is only out of exclamation through unexpected
expression out an adult female. And, the hidden motif of doing naturally so is that it
may not be possible on being conventional. Instead, she proclaimed her society as
cowards and invited them to do then, as exercised by the one in Paris;
SHE has been burning palaces. ‘To see,
The sparks look pretty in the wind?” Well yes—
And something more. But women brave as she
Leaves much for cowards, such as I, to guess. (Piatt 119).
She herself examined whether there had any socially immoral events taken place and
left adjudged. The use of the second person singular form ‘you’ was used to judge the
present event. The dignified outburst of emotions left against the actions of fully
armed soldiers and their brutal killing of Christians against ‘the communist’ like the
one who burnt the castle. It's denoted as;
But they had guns in ‘France, and Christian men
Shot wicked little communists like you. (Piatt 120)
The trace of communism is regarded as an automatic inclusion in her judgment at one
time when she picked up the photograph of the palace burner. The foremost reason
would be the gender identification which made her to have an emotional impact.
Secondly, she acted, as being a conventional Victorian woman of norms and selfjustifications like the speaker ‘revealed, ‘…. Oh! Why/ Have I not taught you to
respect the laws? / you would have burned the palace--would not I’ (120). Between
two, the rebellious role of a female who burnt would have much attracted the author
like Bennett to choose the title of the poem to be used as title for her collection of
Sarah Piatt’s poems. She called her collection as ‘The Palace Burner’ in order to show
72 a palace burner is a female. Basically, in every woman there would always be a sense
of rebelliousness to every socially unacceptable event that had been eventually shown
in the final phase of Piatt’s final stanza in ‘The Palace Burner’;
Would I burn Palaces/ The child has seen
In this fierce creature of the commune here,
So bright with bitterness and so serene,
A being finer than my soul, I fear.
There is a substitute for the ‘fierce (ness)’ in ‘Beatrice Cenci: ‘Fairness so fierce, or
fierceness half so Fair? (Piatt, 71). Sarah would have been in her half acceptance of
such communal events, also, being part of such events, emotionally involved. For all,
the inheritance of gender image and the stereotyped character of her contemporary era
which are absolutely rooted in the Victorian, conventional, sensibility. In Giordano’s
view, “‘The Palace Burner’ is one of several Piatt’s poems, including ‘Playing
Beggars’, ‘A neighbourhood incident’, and ‘A Night Scene from the Rock of Cashel,
Ireland’, that complexly emphasizes with the victims of class and social inequalities”
(Giordano 7). Likewise, he says that, ‘according to Bennett, the delineation of the
communard to which ‘The Palace Burner’ refers to was most likely the one printed in
the July 1871 publication of ‘Harper’s Weekly, ‘The End of the commune –Execution
of a Petroleuse’ which accompanied an article about women’s participation in the
communist insurrection (7). These two poems were much discussed among Piatt’s
other poems which would deal with the political events’ impact in her writing. There
are some other reasons than Giordano’s narrow view on Sarah Piatt’s poems which
are, according to him emphasizing the class and societal inequalities. There are no
such, phrases for getting clues to the point to reckon them as echo on such concepts.
73 She was a neutral in all two contradictory entities of the events, between,
‘reality and romance’, ‘faith and non-faith in God’s will and presence’, beauty and
ugly’, good and bad’, ‘life and death’, ‘North and South’, image of stereotyped
southern slave owners’ daughter and one, giving voice to the slaves’, Religious and
communists’, ‘valouric and victimized’ so on. In ‘The Palace Burner’ at the
beginning, Piatt has criticized the burner as ‘wicked’ like the one (might be the boy
who was with her and asking questions!) who is the listener or the spectator of her
view through the poem. Only, at the later part of the poem she pacified herself against
the opinion that she threw against the communism. Those two stanzas are as follow;
You wish that you had lived in Paris then?
You would have loved to burn a palace, too?
But they had guns in France, and Christian men
Shot wicked little communists, like you (Bennett 39).
In the above stanza the burner of the palace was considered as a wicked communist.
Because, in olden days it was a belief that woman would be gentle and never turned
as violent as the Beatrice Cenci who burnt the palace in Paris.
And,
Would I burn palaces? The child has been
In this fierce creature of the commune here,
So bright with bitterness and so serene,
A being finer than my soul, I fear. (40)
In accordance with this, Giordano is of opinion that, “in conjunction with its political
message, nevertheless, ‘The Palace Burner’ illustrates the powerful and complicated
impact periodicals exerted on nineteenth century middle class American life… The
picture and the accompanying article not only reports the news of the day, they
74 transgress the barriers of nation and domestic space to present the speaker to a novel
mode of thinking about herself, her gender, and her world” (Giordano 9).
In Sarah Piatt’s poems starting from slavery, civil warfare, class inequalities,
child-raising to other domestic themes she has gained a multi-faced outlook for her
expressions in the poems. The political themes especially in ‘The Palace Burner’ and
‘Beatrice Cenci’ which are out of time limitations value her for maintenance of time
sequence from sixteenth century’s Guido Reni’s famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci,
after passing Shelley’s ‘The Cenci’ of the nineteenth century writer Francesco
Domenico Guerrazzi’s sentimentalized romance ‘Beatrice Cenci’ (1854) and the
drama to which Piatt has gone or came to know about through the portrait hung in the
city shop. All are Piatt’s intellectual multiplicity in depicting them all in a single-time
frame with conjunctive phrases. Both ‘The Palace Burner’ and the ‘Beatrice Cenci’
serve even after a century’s passing tests for showing the enigmatic quality and
political subversion of Piatt’s writing.
Bennett says that “in the split consciousness that contains this poem (The
Palace Burner), forcing the speaker to testify against herself, Piatt gives formal shape
to her ironic awareness of the blatant gulf between sentimentality’s social and
domestic. In particular, this poem challenges the high sentimentality of woman’s
bedrock assumption of the domestic virtue is being automatically translated into
social virtue” (220). It has rarely been witnessed that women of domestic
circumstances arose to write nearly the social virtues after Sarah Piatt’s emergence
and a very few women authors had also caused something to their part. From its
ground level 'The Palace Burner', could be a simple theme of conversation between a
mother and child, talking about social issues to their leisure walk along the roadside.
Yet, it exhibits in the intimate space of quest in transmitting the social condition and
75 portrayed a female rebel, who is the speaker of Piatt’s poem, being a bourgeois in the
Paris Commune. Bennett on her description about that woman, she says that ‘she, the
woman who with no alternative but starvation took protest in the street’ (216). She
also says that ‘The Palace Burner’ holds up a mirror wherein bourgeois domesticity
reveals itself as a pernicious form of a political narcissism instead;
Would I burn Palaces? The Child has seen
In this fierce creature of the commune here,
So bright with bitterness and so serene,
A Being finer than my soul, I fear (Bennett 40)
She identified this as “a self-ironical note of Sarah” (221). In a very few poems like
“The Palace Burner’ and ‘Beatrice Cenci’ Piatt has been with some rebellious
oscillation in her head, depicted themes of horror. Yet, in most of her poems she has
been very conventional in choosing phrases to express her opinions.
Issue of slavery
‘Slavery’ is one of the major themes of Sarah Piatt’s themes. It is mandatory
to have adequate information about Piatt’s family background which would be the
part of thematic analysis. Sarah Piatt’s family had slaves to cultivate in their
plantation house. It was referred by critics like Bennett, Renker, Giordano and Lucy
Frank. On a sample of reading the poems like ‘The Black Princess’ (1872), ‘Over in
Kentucky’ (1872), ‘The Old Slave Music’ (1873), ‘A Child’s Party’ (1883) and ‘A
Child in The Park (1891), one could easily find reasons for how Sarah Piatt had been
a little tougher to the readers not satisfying the expectation that ‘a writer should be to
the justice and a neutral at least.’ Rather, she had dealt with some inherited view
about the slavery system and expressed it through some carefully handled phrases to
her credit.
76 Except in writing, Sarah Piatt had not left any other records on slavery. This
was also retold by Lucy Frank in her study ‘The slave of slavery: Race and
Reconstruction in Sarah Piatt’s Poetry” (3). Sarah’s childhood age was so poor and
pathetically mended after losing her mother. Bennett is of her view about Piatt’s
childhood age when she says that “after her mother’s death, in a custom often
followed in the South, the ‘orphaned’ children, Piatt and two younger siblings were
parceled out among relatives, with Piatt and her sister, Ellen, going back to the
grandmother’s plantation outside Lexington. After the grandmother’s death, the two
girls were placed with family friends and then, briefly, went to live with their father
and new stepmother on the latter’s plantation in Versallies, Kentucky. Throughout
these phases of Sarah’s life, the one constant person was her mother’s nurse, an
elderly slave woman” (xxiii).
From the reading of Sarah Piatt’s poems one could understand what happened
to be in between the two extremes of any two aspects of events and matters related to
them. One cannot conclude her thoughts as oriented to one-sided or to aspects of
another side. This could be considered in her major thematic writing and the treatment
of slavery and expression of its transparency also had the same perspective. To be
noted further, there were criticisms against Sarah Piatt’s treatment of slave as a theme
in her writing, as her family owned slaves. Her reflections about the nature of slaves
got her neutral stand with the beauty of poetic expression. She allows her view not to
be misunderstood by the critics of later-age, in order to make it to be with her
expectation and governance required for ‘poetic license’. It was, later criticized that
she oriented her thoughts and expressions as racial view against the African-slave
workers. And, it encompassed the total control over the people who enslaved Africans
making them work and get yield from the plantations.
77 The information which Bennett provided in her book ‘The Palace Burner’
gives the ample atmosphere with which Sarah Piatt had constructed her poem ‘A
Child’s Party’, which was published in the year 1883. The information she provided
was a basic situation: Sarah Piatt, added that “Here in exile, I can only feel a far-away
interest I the New Orleans Exhibition. But I belong, birth, at least, to the old South
and once I had friends of my slave-playmates and find myself home-sick for the time
when I was, as they seem to imagine, ‘a little Negro myself!” (175 -86).
In ‘A Child’s Party’ (published in the Wide Awake – 17:5:1 Oct 1883) there
were three major characters involved. According to Piatt’s usual style of speaking
through one or more voices to describe negotiations and themes this poem also was a
mouthpiece through three speakers. One character was the poetess herself played
through her childhood age to the mature level. The second was her childhood
playmate, African girl and the third one is old Brother Blair.
Evidences in the introduction part drawn from Bennett’s ‘The Palace Burner’
it is shown that this poem was composed immediately after the death of Piatt’s
mother. By taking this into consideration, a scholar - critic like Lucy Frank had
constructed her view and explanations over the poem. The opening of the poem seems
to be the consolation given by Piatt’s childhood playmate mentioning the passing
away of Piatt’s mother and she would be consoled by reading the Holy Bible as it
would usually be done by her Old Mistress;
Before my cheeks were fairly dry,
I heard my dusky playmate say:
‘Well now your mother’s in the sky,
And you can always have your way,
The comforting voice of the playmate had made the persona feel ease on taking up the
78 loss of her mother during her childhood stage. The usual event of old mistress life like
reading the Holy Text at the house, the playmate and the persona were about to leave
the playing to attend a party like event;
Old Mistress has to stay you know,
And read the Bible in her room.
Let’s have a party! Will you though?
Ah, Well, the whole world was in bloom. (Bennett 114).
The childhood playmate’s effort to comfort and to make Piatt to be normal to attend a
party as she had been ever before her mother’s death is expressed here.
A party would be fine, and yet –
There’s no one here I can invite.”
“Me and the children” “You forget-“
“Oh, please pretend that I am white.”
I said, and think of it with shame,
“Well, when I’s over, you’ll go back
There to the cabin all the same,
And just remember you are black.
“I’ll be the lady, for, you see,
I’m pretty”, I serenely said.
“The black folk say that you would be
If – if your hair just wasn’t red. (IV & V stanzas).
From the previously quoted stanza it is following one, one could predict the action
and counter-reaction of both the African-girl with her black skin and the one with
Caucasian’s white, revealed the sensitive quarrel for the complex of black and white
race differences;
79 I’m pretty anyhow, you know.
I saw this morning that I was.
Old Mistress says it’s wicked, though,
To keep on looking in the glass (114)
The Old Brother Blair was a well known African and champion of them. It was
practised by the African playmate to identify her with that well known person,
considering that they were such famous Blair’s relatives. She did not know the fact
that this identification would cause much dishonour in the maturity for being an
African amidst the white company. The racially influenced phrases like;
Oh, he is not a gentleman:
I said with “my Caucasian scorn”.
“He is”, replied the African;
“He is. He is “quite a plowing corn.
The racial phrases like “not a gentleman’, “my Causican Scorn”, the raw mentioning
of “the African” and he is “quite a plowing corn” are used in stanza no 23 and 26
were more offensive, which would not be known to the child, however, it was
revealed as words of confession of the white child for being so aggressive and racially
influenced. In the last stanza, Piatt concludes with graceful accomplishment towards
her old Mistress for being with her from childhood age to tell she was hurting due to
her mother’s loss. She describes the sorrow of her nursing woman as;
Tears made of dew were in my eyes.
These after tears are made of brine.
No sweeter soul is in the skies
Than hers, my mother’s and mine (118).
80 On going through the hardship of losing a dear mother and having seen the event of
loss, and being alone she looked the mirror forever. Being alone, she looked on every
second, her grief stricken look of hers. She briefed the beloved grandma’s lovable
words of expressing the depth of love:
I felt the flush of sudden pride,
The others soon grew still with awe,
For, standing bravely at my side,
My mother’s nurse and mine, they saw.
Who blamed my child?” she said. “It makes
My heart ache when they trouble you.
Here’s a whole basket full of cakes,
And I’ll come to the party too… (Bennett 117).
Sarah Piatt observes the livelihood of African slaves from the living status of them at
her home itself. She deployed her “southerner identification and brought the
mediocre-position of her as an abolitionist”, denoted by Lucy frank (Lucy 8). The
speaker’s relationship was set up through the portrayal of the actual language spoken
by the nursing woman. The words were against the outrage of the other hard workers.
The following stanza could clearly demonstrate this;
Who blamed my child?” she said, “It makes
My heartache when they trouble you.
Here’s a whole basketful of cakes,
And I’ll come to the party too.
Despite the love of nursing woman being not equal and pure as mother’s Sarah
admires nurse’s care towards her... The perspective of Lucy may be accepted for
81 consideration in studying the system of slavery that had been passed generation to
generation as the symbol of pride of having slaves. Lucy says that “with the shame of
having it as sustaining” (9).
In continuation of referring to the African nursing woman, Piatt had given
more value and pride in ‘The Black Princess’ for describing the nature of the African
maid who had been with Sarah Piatt from her childhood stage. ‘The Black Princess’
was published in the year 1872 (Independent 24:1256:2 Dec 26), eleven years before
she published her ‘The Child’s Party’, a poem which dealt with both the passion of
African nursing woman, and the orientation of Sarah with her racial identification. It
was an artifice of writing that had preceded the reading and discernment of the reader.
It is ambivalent to know whether the poetess was for or against the racially
differentiated feeling of the African slaves.
From the phrases used like ‘A true fable’ in sub-title part, ‘dainty pen of gold’
and ‘in a fairy book’ the persona of the poems denoted the actual motif of description
which the speaker wanted to be imparted to the beauty and characteristics of the
nursing woman. The word ‘slave’ was used four times and ‘slavery’ and other related
phrases were used thrice with a strong stress on them. The only striking sense was
from the phrase ‘slave’ often found hurting. While saying it out normally by a nonAfrican writer to distinguish with the sympathetic feeling for the other one, those had
discoursed to be the subject matter. Unless there would be a sense of treating along
with equal priority of people like the nursing woman of an African subspecies
sympathetic feeling would never be matched with racial equality. This was justified
by critics of both American and African literature. Nevertheless, according to Sarah
Piatt’s view, she maintained neutral mood and pacification of it through her phases
like ‘hapless, powerful slave” (18) ‘Prince was a slave’ (11) ‘Slave of the slavery’
82 (20) ‘But enchanted black’ (29) along with ‘uniquely beauty of her smile’ (22), for the
beauty of court lace and jewels. And,
Nothing of loveliest loveliness
This strange, sad Princess seemed to lack;
Majestic with her calm distress
She was, and beautiful, though black (25-28).
These were the phrases which the speaker used to maintain the centralized and
neutralized view to treat the nature and features of her African nursing-adult female.
Piatt had been in a safer part by not allowing her phrases which identified only with
the stereotyped expressions with the dominating racial identification of her Southern
American white race. Despite all these, the artistic quality of the poem was beautifully
textured in describing the nature of ‘The Black Princess’ The final part of the poem
was constructed with the hem of the Princess, who could again cut her not with the
matrimonial blessings, but with the ride of death, cantering on a pale horse. The
restored sympathy of the speaker was actually shown in the last stanza;
And in her Father’s house beyond,
They gave her beauty, robe, and crown:
On me, I think, far, fait, and fond,
Her eye s to-day look – yearning, down. (40-44)
Both ‘A Child’s Party and ‘The Black Princess’ the speaker’s voice had
indispensable, stereotyped manners by which the theme of two poems had been
fabricated. It could be in fact, undeniable for the phrases of the racial perseverance of
the writer that had shown her mediocrity in between two extremely contrasting races
and colours. It was Lucy Frank, who had contributed much insight in her study on the
treatment of slave, especially the African-nursing woman in Piatt’s house till the
83 passing of her mother.
In later period, the desired provocation of the speaker in slavery system was
visibly seen through many of the idioms used by the speaker to describe the condition,
character and their actual treatment of slaves by others in the south division of
America. These two poems had marked the past story of the southern lands where the
slavery system was under practice and was presumably under greater influencing
factors. Moreover, that had helped with the upkeep of the yielding from the
plantations and farms, and afterwards the same paved way for the abolition of it to
bring it upwards as the primal step stone to attain exemption from all clutches
including the agony of women of both blank and black races. ‘Over In Kentucky’ was
written from Ireland (Ind 24:1209:2 Feb 1 (1872) where Sarah Piatt had been in
deportation. Kentucky was the birthplace of Sarah Piatt. When the whole theme of the
poems was constructed on the Civil War and the portrayal of the Kentuckian nurse
had wider influence in depicting the Civil War effects.
The opening of the poem was Piatt’s usual style of beginning as a
conversation. Hither, the daughter of the speaker of the poem gets the interest of a
close listener of the mother’s speech. While the first stanza included the conversation
the third stanza spoke for the salve and the nature of the slavery system. The
slaveholders of the southern plantation were so fierce. It was mentioned in her poem
as;
Perhaps I thought how fierce the master’s hold,
Spite of all armies, kept the slave within;
How iron chains, when broken, turned to gold,
In empty cabins, where glad songs had been
Before the Southern sword knew blood and rust,
84 Before wild Cavalry sprang from the dust,
‘Over in Kentucky’ (Piatt, 1874 75).
There had been ‘glad songs’ before the civil war burst out. It was clearly noted in the
second section of the third sestet as “In empty cans were glad songs had been / Before
the southern sword knew blood and rust.” Bennett is commenting on this poem. She
reads as; “Except for the parenthetical clause in line two, the first stanza is addressed
by the speaker’s daughter; the second is spoken by the same black nurse who appears
in ‘The Black Princess” and other poems. The remaining stanzas represent the
thoughts of the mother; a former Kentuckian now lives across the Ohio River in
Cincinnati. The muse’s nostalgia for prewar days is not necessarily a projection of the
mother’s own (presumably disavowed) nostalgia. Many southern blacks found the
reconstruction period a time of difficult readjustment. Stanza 3’s treatment of the
“Old slave-music”, as Piatt calls it elsewhere, is another matter. These “glad songs”
were not lost, although white slave holders such as Piatt did not accede to them”
(2001 167-26).
Yet, Piatt was in between the portrayal of sufferings of Black people and the
happy occasions when such people happened to induce in their work situations. The
vehement criticism of two African American critics like Frederick Doughless (1845)
and W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) was put forth critically. This should be considered to
Piatt’s usage of ‘glad songs’ to be interviewed, by Bennett as she depicted it in her
end notes (167 -31).
Lucky Frank had also leveled out the same that it was unimaginable to find
such occasion by the slave people to be happy when they were under the slavery
system. The sad tone of the poem existed from the outset. Shuffling up the two lines’
85 events along with the war effects had shown a more hopeful portion of the author’s
knowledge in conversing the events in an admirable way as she used to be in most of
her poems. The final stanzas’ motion was of the speaker’s nostalgia over the past and
present, which encompassed her to prefer older, farmhouse life like that she had in her
own town, Kentucky:
Unbuilded cities, and unbroken lands,
With something sweeter than the faded stars
And dim, dead dews of my lost romances, found
In beauty that has vanished from the ground
Over in Kentucky (1874 77)
The kinship with the African nurse was an ever-remembering part of poem. The first
line of the last stanza was one among the remarkable, extensional view expressed by
the poet:
The dear has restless, dimpled, pretty hands,
Yearning toward unshaped steel, unfancied wars (76).
In the assembling of verse forms which deal with the issues of slaves and slavery
management, practiced in the southerly division of American sub-continent, Sarah
Piatt’s “The Old slave Music” was still another bit of artistic production in which the
nature of south and slavery was presented with a little more penetration into the plight
and pathos of slaves, and the changes after the polite war. This verse form was printed
in the year 1873 (Cap 3:8:2 AP 27). According to Bennett, “this type of song was
liked by the pro-slavery apologists to point out that, such songs were evidence to state
that the slaves were happy in their workplace; then it was vehemently disputed by
Frederick Douglass (1845) and W.E.B Du Bois (1903). She too made out that writing
nostalgically; Sarah Piatt appeared to take up a spot between the two alternatives.
86 Singing was a sort of self-comfort that gave the slaves (real) pleasure and a sense of
freedom while they sang” (167 - 31).
Sarah Piatt describes that the song of a bird heard by slave-men and women at
work place on some occasions. It could have been written some years later, since she
wanted to hear it again. The animated ‘bird’ was considered to be the echoing creature
to make the happy songs sung by the slaves;
Blow back the breath of the bird,
Scatter the song through the air;
There was music you never heard,
And cannot hear anywhere.
For the song, the peace and perfectness of the past made the author feel happy with
them rather to have a war affected south which keeps the dead and the buried out of
mind. The music which she utilized to pick up in the past was giving her happiness at
the rejection of the lover’s loving token love. It is noted down.
It was not the sob of the vain
In the old, old dark so sweet,
(I shall never hear it again)
Nor the coming of the fairy feet.
It was music and music alone,
Not a sigh a lover’s mouth;
Now it comes in a phantom moan
From the dead and buried South.
The fierceness of the Civil War and its outcome had made the entire south as
mourning place for the loss of past, wealth and peace and prosperity. Instead, the
country seemed to be the burial place of dead at the most. Listening to the slaves’
87 music turned speaker’s emotional bondage to be springing out as;
It was savage and fierce and glad,
It played with the heart at will;
Oh, what a wizard touch it had –
Of, if I could hear it still!
Were they slaves? They were not then;
The music had made them free.
They were happy women and men –
What more do we care to be? (43)
The civil war could have gained the freedom of slaves of the South and led them be
walking freely in the streets. The nature of streets had turned to be satiated with blood
and debris. The deprivation of lives for the sake of war and triumph over the slavery
had left greater impacts. The recalling of the past and music of the slaves for attaining
freedom from bondage and the mixing it with the music of slaves become happier to
the storyteller!
Dark ghosts with your ghostly tunes
Came back till I laugh through tears;
Dance under the sunken moons,
Dance over the grassy years!
Probably, the music of victory had turned the speaker to be glad. The courage of the
army men had changed the plight of the past into happy end;
Hush, hush – I know it, I say;
Your armies were bright and brave,
But the music they took away
Was worth – whatever they gave. (43)
88 Sarah Piatt’s treatment of slavery has been in the consideration of great minds of the
world to price her writing poems as literature is one among the best means by which
the story could be talked out. The Piatt’s poems had also flowed into that class to
enrich the belief of the intellects. It is evident that Sarah Piatt advocated for the slaves
and voiced their sufferings despite being a Southerner and having slaves at home. Her
sympathy towards them is expressed in her poems.
Treatment of religious themes
Sarah Piatt’s innumerable poems formulate typical self examination and self
identity in the sense of making out introspective metaphysical correlation between
God and man. In her philosophical moments, analyzing her losses she bluntly
expresses the agonies of her heart by way of questioning the creator. Sarah Piatt’s
poems on spiritual subjects were seen to be the outlet to her adverse situations.
Generally, she established that she had been in trouble, and believed in change over
later on the passing of sheer adversities. Poems such as, ‘Prevented Choice’ (1872),
‘The Funeral of a Doll’ (1872), ‘We Two’ (1874)’, ‘Comfort—by a Coffin’ (1876),
‘When saw We Thee’ (1888), and ‘A Daffodil’ (1911), have biblical allusions to
bring the subjective elation to the roots.
It has been the interest to any citizen to be named with a nation, a religion and
sect particularly in order to insure the individual identified on social custom. Piatt,
from southern American identification, identified her with the catholic religious
orientation. In this regard, in ‘Prevented Choice’, according to Bennett’s suggestion
there has been more than one stanza that needs the aid of the Holy Bible references
(allusions) to find the real temper of the poetry by which the talker wants to convey it.
In the second stanza the biblical allusion is taken from Matthew 14:25 to
represent the Holy Spirit as a ‘White Dove’;
89 He wore divinest air
About Him like a garment, while
A White Dove flutter’d at His shoulder,
Its wind could – touch His smile. (Bennett (2001): 30).
The ‘White Dove’ represents traditionally the ‘The Holy Spirit’ and, in the following
stanza it is identified as;
The Pinnacle’s sharp height,
The shadow of the wilderness,
The black and beating waves He walked at night
Toward my unborn distress: (31).
The definite article ‘the’ in front of the ‘wilderness’ requires the reference to
Matthew 4:1-12 - “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wild to be tempted of
the devil” (4); Mark 1:13 - “ and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted
[a] by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him”; and Luke 4:213; and the retrospective justification by allowing a line as ‘toward my unborn
distress:’ needs special care to understand the importance which paid by the speaker
on making use of the religious references.
In the sixth stanza, “The Kingdoms of The World” (24) and in eighth stanza;
“…. These / And all the glory there of see? Mine are the shining lands, the shining
Seas. / Fall down and worship me full of Biblical allusions. The Third stanza’s
‘Wilderness is taken from ‘Mark 1:13, it is given as follows;
“And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was
with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him”? (The Gideons 968). The
allusions to Luke 4:2-13, which specifically brings the conversational part between
the son of God Christ and Satan. Satan tempts Christ showing all the wealth of world
90 to worship him het His staunch faith in His Father’s words and His firmness saved
him to overcome temptations and brought Him what he deserved and assured by His
Father.
Bennett is of opinion that, ‘in this dream vision Piatt’s speaker identifies her
scene of temptation with that of Christ in the wilderness: Matthew 4:1-12, Mark 1:13
and Luke 4:2-13. Yet, rare as the poem merges Christ and the speaker, it’s hitting the
conventional piety of the final stanza an uneasy resolution at best. A white dove
traditionally represents the Holy Spirit.” (2001, 166); ‘Matthew 14:25 was also
referred here as ‘and in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking
on the sea”, and John 11:44’ “And he that was dead came fourth, bound hand and foot
with grave clothes.” Stanzas 5-8 fuse two separate temptations: turning stones into
bread and yielding to the desire for worldly power, (In Matthew 4:3-9) the ‘Word’ in
the final stanza can be either the Word of God or Christ (the Logos), or both.” (166 –
20) as it is given in John 1:1 and John 1:14 “The word was made flesh and dwelt
among us”. The title of the poem seems to be allegoric when looking for a unanimous
identification either to be with the words of God or with the worldly desires. The
poverty could also be taken as the means to stop Piatt’s speaker’s desire to be bridled
with warnings and firmness as encountered by Christ for the sake of His Father’s
words and assurance. The final stanza leads to conclude that, the speaker of Piatt was
not convinced with worldly means to be away from her bestowed, spiritual and good
qualities, as shown down;
He made the picture dim
With rays that glimmer’d from word
And left my soul, in memory of Him
His own White, nestling Bird. (Bennett 31).
91 The ‘We Two’ (Ind 26: 1345:7 Sep to 1874), is Piatt’s one among the grief stricken
poems, which hits her at nerves even to the point of questioning the presence of God
in the deprivation of her kids. The filial bondage of a normal human existence would
be emotionally bound, ever, with very attachment of one’s own kith and kindred.
Thus, there would be no argument on Piatt’s attachment with her loving children
while the loss of her children with a continual time gap. The allusions made the poem
concrete to the tactile sensation of loss of Piatt’s speaker who might be none other
than Piatt’s alternate.
‘We Two’ is utterly two dimensional poem for understanding Piatt’s nature of
picking Biblical phrases from Psalms, especially Psalms 91, like ‘the famine’ ‘the
blood’, ‘coffin shutter’, ‘the worm’ (in the second stanza); and ‘arrow that flies by
night’, ‘walking pestilence at bay’, ‘cold in the valley’, ‘the rock on the light’ etc. (in
the third stanza); to determine God’s will. Since this poetry was printed in the year
1874, it’s for the assertion that Sarah Piatt had lost her two children in a year’s gap
from 1873-74, an unnamed baby in 1873 and Victor, who perished in a freak Fourth
of July accident in 1874. Bennett further says that, ‘The poem’s imagery draws
reference from the Holy Bible, Psalm 91; 5-6, in which it has been found that the
verses and phrases like ‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the
arrow that flieth by day nor the pestilence the stalks in the darkness, nor the
destruction that wastes at noonday” (xxiii). Just like the Book of Job poses the age-old
ever present question of humanity, “Where’s God, while we are suffering?” she
attempts to talk about the same question. In Job 21:33, it is given ‘The clods of the
valley are sweet to him”, uttered by Job; and Matthew 3; 17, “and lo, a voice from
heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased”, spoken by
God at Christ’s baptism.” It clearly distinguished between obedience to God’s will
92 and acceptance of it. Piatt, according to Bennett, identifies her speaker with Job as
much as Christ” (2001 168).
These poems might bring evidences or traces of biographical elements in which
Sarah Piatt has grieved for her dead children and question where God is when they
died. While the original scriptures say that “You shall not afraid of the terror by
‘night’, nor of the arrow that flies by ‘day’ (Psalm 91:5) and “Nor of the plague that
walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noon” (Psalm 91:6). Sarah
Piatt had used ‘night’ and ‘day’ alternatively to her poetic lines as ‘arrow flieth by
night’ and ‘pestilence walking by day’ rather to be as used in the Holy Text, exactly.
She used the progressive form of regular verb ‘Walk” (walking) and this indicates the
ongoing nature of the deadly, diseased atmosphere of her mind.
The entire poem was outcome of speaker’s fatigue which made her to be
sorrowful and mad at the testament of God, by which she had unshakable faith until
the source of the passing of her second child Victor. The first loss of an unnamed
child had already struck her and the later of Victor’s enhanced her agony. The
motherhood’s expression with an indirect metaphor using ‘lily to mother’ and ‘dew
over it to child’ became a greater meaning of keeping dew in lily and ‘crying for the
loss of it’ like the light (probably the light, will of God) that had progressed to the
dew, unseen by its force;
God’s will is – your own will. What honour have you
For having your own will, awake or asleep
Who praises the lily for keeping the dew,
When the dew is so sweet for the lily to keep?
The possibility of hope to be at the feet of her lost son is settled by the speaker. It was
her wish and she delivered a little faith in fulfilling the aspirations to be with her
93 helpless son, afterward the end. The speaker’s unshakable faith in the seat of heaven’
seems to be present in the sky. While she would reach over there she could hear the
satisfactory voice as denoted in the final stanza of ‘We Two’ “Lo! I am easily
pleased!” This construction of satisfactory remark had a marking of either the speaker
or of her recently passed son who was away from his presence at home. The total
unbelief and the utter capitulation of the speaker to the volition of God show the
transition state of her faith in God’s will. Her expectation was to appease the wish of a
mother to be at the feet of her dear son. It was her dilemma whether to please the God,
accepting grief or resigning to the loss of children and faith in her appeal,
respectively. It is stated in the last stanza;
God’s will is—not mine. Yet one night I shall die
Very still at his feet, where the stars may not shine.
“Lo! I am well pleased” I shall hear from the sky;
Because—it is God’s will I do, and not mine! (Bennett 52).
Piatt, being the speaker, managed her agony and faith in the volition of God without
dying to bring-forth her wish to be accomplished by God. In “Her Blindness in Grief”
(1873), the speaker expressed her first loss’ exposure; having compared her loss to
Mary Magdalene’s loss of Christ. Here, John 20:15 is referred to. Equally it was
expressed by Bennett. She announces that “It was her first loss and she was
disconsolate. Appearing in the independent ascent three months later to the baby’s
death, this poem supports J.J’s contention that Piatt put her own experience directly
into her poetry, at a pitch of absolute raw emotion” (Bennett 168-38). The idiomatic
expression “Why weepest thou” in double quote, signifies the words addressed by
Jesus in John Chapter 20 verse 15. It is averred that, “Jesus said to her “Woman, why
are you weeping?” (Gideons 1059). The place of a mother’s loss of her dearly loved
94 son, made her compare her grief stricken heart to the one of Mary Magdalene. The
question was aroused forward by an empty tomb witnessed by Mary with Peter and
another disciple. And, when everybody returned home, including Peter too, along
with some other disciples it happened as a conversation between Mary and Christ. It
occurred when Mary alone stood weeping, with an unrecognizable face as a gardener,
to be recognized by Mary when He called her ‘Mary. She was satisfied with the
answer.
Under greater dejection caused by deaths of Sarah Piatt’s children, she had set
up to be emotionally unbalanced. That was contemplated in many of her poems,
composed on the loss of children and other dearly loved persons like a soldier-lover.
In ‘Comfort—By a Coffin’ (Scribner’s Monthly, 1876), the expression of the
Corinthian’s 2:9 was required to bring the relativity of both the speaker’s emotion and
language related to the emotion expressed in the Holy Bible;
Ah, friend of mine,
The music (which ear hath not heard)
At best wails from the skies
Somehow, into our funeral cries?
The flowers Eye hath not seen?) Still fail
To hide the coffin-lid
Against this face so pitiless now and pale
Can the high Heavens avail? (Bennett 64).
The expression of weariness in the second stanza seems to be the echo of I
Corinthians 2:9. The verse says, “But as it is written: ‘Eye has not experienced, nor
ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has made for
those who love Him” (Gideons 116).
95 Piatt’s “When Saw We Thee” published in Bel 1:5:663 October 1888 brings
reference to the author’s travel exposures. Sarah Piatt was travelling to the European
nations. In Europe, Lille, Paris, Cologne, and Bruges are known for Cathedrals and
religious art. The reference to Lille in the first stanza: ‘In the Cathedral ‘There, at
Lille, to me’ (2); reference to Paris in glittering night (6); reference to Cologne: ‘How
in that shadowy temple in Cologne (9); and reference to Bruges in fourth Stanza:
‘And how at Bruges, at a beggar’s breast, (13), are some of the places visited by Piatt.
According to Bennett, “At each site she refrained from giving charity to the poor
because she demanded money to pay entry fees for sports where images of Christ and
his mother could be viewed” (177 – 98).
The whole poem, apart from the extension to the critics, also speaks about the
charity work which the writer of the poem deserved to serve at her frequent visits to
such positions to enable the ‘have-nots’ to get help from people like the author, to
visit such Cathedrals of religious offices often. The final line states the author’s
inability to assist such people when visiting the places: “Him in the promised land -the coins I never granted” (24).
The description of Cathedrals in each stanza shows the reality of the places
close to the sacred offices. Paris is referred as ‘gone mad’, as a word of political
irony. The nature of society or the people became very resonant and it was presented
as a nominating axiom for the worth of Paris”. The son, who found around the Paris
Street, had been with deep eyes and senseless arms. The ‘Deepness’ of the eyes could
be identical with the impoverished or the sleepless nights effect. The contrast in
identification of boy’s deep eyes withered arms and Madness of Paris (streets) with a
glittering night give assumption over the nature of the palace in day and nighttime:
96 How – oh, that boy’s deep eyes and withered arm! –
In a mad Paris street, one glittering night,
Three times drawn backward by his beauty’s charm,
I gave him – not a farthing for the sight. (Bennett 130).
In the shadowy temple in Cologne, amidst the mighty music, the speaker wept for the
loss of an unidentified man and whose painful mourning liberated the stagnant
thoughts to feel for his suffering;
How in that shadowy temple at Cologne,
Through all the mighty music, I did wring
The agony of his last moral moan
From that blind soul I gave not anything.
The beggars’ wandering and the haunting of technology’s impact through windmill
around Bruges; the leaves whirled on windmill’s running; the presence of the poor
man’s mother with a thirsty look on woe were made the author to be very interested.
The use of Capital of ‘H’ in the possessive ‘Him” leaves thought of comparing him
with the Christ’s presence. The ‘Connective’ in the stanza distracts the assumption;
And, how at Bruges, at a beggar’s breast,
There by the windmill where the leaves whirled so,
I say Him musing, passed Him with the rest,
Followed by His starved mother’s stare of woe.
But, my Lord Christ, Thou Knowest I had not much,
And had to keep that which I had for grace
To look, Forsooth, where some dead painter’s touch
Had left, Thy thorn-wound or thy mother’s face. (130)
97 Here the Biblical allusion refers to Christ who is in the form of everyone who’s
hungry, poor and needful. Christ stated, “Whatever you behave them you do unto me”
and Piatt tries to justify that she’s unable to serve. Moreover, she strains to make the
comparative view between the beggar and his mother’s expression and the Thornwounded face of Christ and His mother’s. According to Bennett, “the poem’s
explanation needs the reference of Matthew 25’. And, the final lines are open to
opposing readings – Piatt’s guilt ridden speaker wants Christ to maintain for her what
she herself “never paid” (Charity, or love); or far more likely, the speaker sardonically
acknowledges that she would get into heaven precisely what she ‘gave’ on earth (That
is, the coins she did not pass, or ‘nothing’). This would correspond with the chapter of
Matthew, where the righteous are distinguished by their charity to the poor” (177 –
98).
The discussion of religious composition is found in ‘A Daffodil’ which speaks
of the presence of Satan, the master of Hades, and the possibility of taking in his
Queen too. The acknowledgment to ‘Enna’, ‘Persephone’, ‘Dis’, ‘Shadow Kind’,
‘Lord of Hades’ and ‘Sadder’ is indicating the actual nature of the poem which the
full notes of construction have been working on. However, the irony fixing title, as
Sarah’s usual way, she named it by leaving more than one particular reference either
literally or biologically. The real comparison of ‘Daffodil;’ may come closer to the
Queen of Shadow King, the author had shown her literal play of expressing domestic
situations under such title as found in ‘A Daffodil’. This verse form was printed in the
Independent (70:3260:1112 May 1911). According to Bennett, ‘This is Piatt’s last
published poem. In its striking emphasis on light even in darkness, it represents a rare
bit of healing in her canon and a possible moment of acceptance in relation to the
doubts that beset her through her life. ‘Days” is an alternative name for Hades, the
98 situation and the soul” (Bennett 181 - 122).
Religious poems of Sarah Piatt had mingled her psychological perseverance in
terms of her experiences with love, loss, death of dearly loved the kids and spiritual
faith. While, Piatt was in much troubled status, particularly after missing her kids, she
is seen interrogating the significance of her faith in the volition of God. The most
provocative ideas are found in poems such as written about loss of children and one
death of some dearly loved soldier-man. Unlike Emily, who questioned the presence
of God, and irregular to church, giving better examples on her encounters, Sarah Piatt
kept her social custom of typical, conventionally grown up, domestic woman’s nature;
and she had likewise been in working-class status.
By writing on spiritual topics, she strains to bring not only her conflicts and
trust but also the beliefs and faiths prevailed in society during her time, which shaped
her faith.
Poems on Travelling Exposures to Ireland
During the 19th century, there in Ireland some famous events happened.
Particularly, the disaffected nature of the native Irish People against suppression and
subjugation in their own motherland paved ways to struggle against such matters. The
excitements of the native people against the NINA (No Irish Need Apply) out of that
the son and daughters of Ireland were spread about the world as homeless. It was
because of the religious conflict between the Catholic and the Protestant. The ‘Act of
Union and Catholic Emancipation (1800- 1830), ‘The Great Famine (1845 – 1850),
the establishment of ‘Young Ireland Rebellion’ (1848), ‘Land agitation and agrarian
resurgence’, Home Rule Movement (1870 – 1914) were some of the societal and
political events taken place in Ireland, despite the production of poets and writers of
99 renown Irish Literature like, James Augustus Aluysius Joyce (1882 – 1941), and
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900).
Sarah Piatt had been in Ireland between 1883 and 1911 as her husband’s job
was changed over from America. It is learnt from Bennett’s description about Piatt’s
stay in Ireland that, “Her eleven years of stay in Ireland made her change her choice
of finding out the quandary of the common multitude of South American in Ireland. It
was learnt from Bennett’s findings that Piatt had published 130 poems during her stay
in Ireland” (2001 xlvii). Most of these poems were written on Ireland’s social issues
and her family’s travel around the continent. She found out the problems persisted in
Ireland and refracted through her composition.
Piatt’s “A Child’s Cry” is a musical composition of writing as a tourist’s visit
to Kilcolman Castle, which was presented to Elizabethan Poet Edmund Spenser
(1552-99), as a reward for his state service. Later it was burned by the Irish rebels.
Piatt did not omit to show her respect towards the qualitative production of Spenser
i.e., ‘The Fairy Queen’. She denotes it as;
I do not miss him though I look
From windows where he watched, and try,
Ah me, to think about his book!
There lie his hills, and there – the high
Fair singer, whose divine old song
Was – well, perhaps almost too long!
The crucial impact of war becomes a considerable voice in her composition. Pitt
pictures both beauties of the Irish and for its flora and fauna and the war effect as
follow;
100 It is a child’s cry, scared awake
By soldiers tramping to and fro;
The baby, by its father’s flight,
Left – to the fire – at dead of night. (118)
While defining about the beauty of Ireland she describes it in “Two Visions of FairyLand” as
.... Oh, it was green and still,
With rocks and wild red roses and a hill,
“And some shy birds that sung far up the air, -And such a river, all in mist, was there! (108)
The prediction of early spring in Ireland in “In Primrose Time” Piatt captures the
morning events as coming of “Lodge-woman in her great clock”, cart man’s
‘Humming a boy’s song like a boy’ while donkey of the cart grazes”, the redcoat
soldier’s respect by raising his hat to all who pass”, and the bluejacket sailor – hear
him whistle / Forgetting Ireland’s ills”. The depiction of a woman for her household
activities Piatt could not move away from her bourgeois nature. She denotes as;
Against the sea – wall leans the Irish beauty,
With face and hands in bloom,
Thinking of anything but household duty
In her thatched cabin’s gloom; -Watching the ships as leisurely as may by,
Her blue eyes dream for hours. (124)
And the old castle was gone by the time for its past monumental way;
…. The ghostly castle,
On its lone rock and grey
101 Cares not a white for either land or vassal
Gone on their dusty way. (125).
Other than these poems, “ A Night Scene from the Rock of Castle”, “A Prayer to
Osiris”, “An Irish Fairy Story”, and “An Irish Wild Flower” are some of the notable
poems written to describe the social and the flora and fauna of Ireland.
In “An Irish Fairy Story” the depiction of the feeling of sufficiency even when
the poverty had stricken the whole land of such a beauty, the poet predicts the faith
toward the Almighty which was shown by a child. It was held so while the author had
a chance to witness a conversation between a mother and her child. The conversation
goes as follows while the child was hushed and turned to go inside the home;
Good mother ---““Sure but things go ill
In our poor country. Yet
He gives me bread and shelter still,
It’s me He’ll not forget.”
We parted, for the light was low;
I turned and looked around;
Lord of us all, can heart’s – ease grow
In such a plot of ground? (121).
Sarah Piatt had produced a number of profoundly influential poems while she was on
her travelling exposures in and around Ireland. She had not only quoted the social
problems of her own local issues of South America, but also represented the Irish
national problems through her poetic sensation. She had a comparative stance towards
both the Southern American and Irish social problems were like in many other
countries the native people were subjugated by the invaders in the name of
reformations. Her poems on travelling focus on social problems of the working class
102 of Ireland where she stayed. She focused social reformation in her writing through
thought provoking lines of her poems to both the places where she had been and to the
people to whom she had written.
In fine, Sarah Piatt’s expression of social themes exploded the exact social
events. She has taken forth the major events in her composition. Most importantly the
themes like slavery management and her voice on that and the religious faith on
enduring the hardships are vital among the other major themes such as politics and
Civil War effects. Her poems other than the social themes on various aspects, themes
of war and religious faith haunted her writing a lot.