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Poems not written by Sligo authors included in the Sligo Times 1912

27 July 1912
Convict Joe by Alexander G. Murdock


Alexander G. Murdoch was born in Glasgow in 1843. He received a limited education and was apprenticed to the trade of marine engineering. He developed an interest in writing and contributed many poems, especially humorous ones, to the Glasgow Weekly Mail.

By 1879 he had published three volumes of his poems and in that year he won the Burns Kilmarnock medal awarded for a poem on the poet. After this he worked with the Glasgow Weekly Mail and published several books of stories. He died in 1901.

31 August 1912:
A Boy's Promise by Susan Coolidge


Susan Coolidge (real name Sarah Chauncey Woolsey) was an American children's author, born in 1835 into a wealthy New England family in Cleveland, Ohio but spent much of her childhood in New Haven, Connecticut after her family moved there.

Woolsey worked as a nurse during the American Civil War, after which she started to write. She never married, and lived at her family home in Newport, Rhode Island, until her death in 1905.

She is best known for her classic children's novel What Katy Did (1872). She also published a number of books of poetry.

12 October 1912:
What Ha' Ye Done? by Rudyard Kipling


Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was a short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He was born in Bombay and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.

He is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Kim, many short stories and poems, including Mandalay, Gunga Din, The White Man's Burden and If— .

He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.


14 December 1912
Is It Nothing to You? by Anna L. Westcome


This long religious poem, eleven stanzas, was printed without an author's name in the Sligo Times. It was written by Anna L. Westcome and was included in her volume of verse Leaves from the Banks of Severn published in London in 1880. It was often reprinted in temperance newspapers and at Christmas time. First and last stanzas below.

Is it nothing to you, O Christians,
   As ye sit around the board,
Where the feast is spread before you,
   And the rich-hues wine is poured,
That a mighty spirit of evil
   Dwells in the bright wine's flow,
That pleasure floats on the surface,
   But danger is hiding below?

Up Christians, up and be doing!
   This is no time for repose;
If you take not the part of your Saviour,
   You take the part of His foes.
Fling the bondage of eveil custom,
   And the fetters of self aside,
Nor destroy with your strength and knowledge,
   The souls for whom Jesus died!


7 September 1912
You Remember Ellen by Thomas Moore


You remember Ellen, our hamlet's pride,
How meekly she bless'd her humble lot,
When the stranger, William, had made her his bride,
And love was the light of their lowly cot.
Together they toil'd through winds and rains,
Till William, at length, in sadness said,
"We must seek our fortune on other plains;" --
Then, sighing, she left her lowly shed.

They roam'd a long and a weary way,
Nor much was the maiden's heart at ease,
When now, at close of one stormy day,
They see a proud castle among the trees.
"To-night," said the youth, "we'll shelter there;
The wind blows cold, the hour is late;"
So he blew the horn with a chieftain's air,
And the porter bow'd, as they passd the gate.

"Now, welcome, Lady," exclaim'd the youth, --
"This castle is thine, and these dark woods all!"
She believed him crazed, but his words were truth,
For Ellen is Lady of Rosna Hall!
And dearly the Lord of Rosna loves
What William the stranger woo'd and wed;
And the light of bliss, in these lordly groves,
Shines pure as it did in the lowly shed.

                                      Thomas Moore


 
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