Shelby-Mcnairy County TN Archives News.....THE DESERTED ROAD April 21, 1867 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/tn/tnfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Bill BOGGESS william-boggess@webtv.net October 29, 2007, 2:06 am Daily Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock April 21, 1867 (copy courtesy of B Holt, 09-13- 07, transcribed by wsb, 10-28-07.)       <>----------<>----------<> from the Memphis Appeal, Albert Pike (1808-1891) editor, http://books.google.com/books?id=F5AOAAAAMAAJ... (search: "Albert Pike")       DAILY   ARKANSAS   GAZETTE Little Rock, Sunday, April 21, 1867, Column C       This poem is of much more than ordinary merit, and whosoever reads it will be glad to know that we are promised others by the same author, whose first publication this is. We are not in the habit of indiscriminate commendatio or extravagant wulogy: and in praising these lines mean quite as much as we say. The young lady (very dear to us) who sends us this poem, says of the writer, "She is very young [12-y/o] and just from school. Her friends think that if she could be encourged to become more interested in writng, she might improve, and learn to write very well." We should think so.       <>----------<>----------<>         THE   DESERTED   ROAD [by Violet Lea, pen name of Fanny Green Borland.]       Here, slanting downward, brokenly and still,       The light lies dreamily upon the grass,       And a grave silence ever seems to pass                  Down from the hill.       The trees rise graudly heavenward, towering high,       Whispring a low, strange mystery to the clouds,       And trembling in the sweep of mosay shrouds,               That round them sigh.       And ever through the stillness there, unstirred,       The sea calls ceaselessly unto the shore,       Till it has grown a silence, and its roar                 Passes unheard.       For many long mysterious, silent years,       No form has made a shadow on the grass,       Or startled voie has waked the silnt pass                    To human fears.       Once, only once,a voice in pain sublime,       Shook with its agony the stagnant air ;       A women, thrown up from ocean's lai,                Wrestled with time.       Dying, a livins body on her breast,       That screamed and starved through two long dragging days,       And, when the third fair morn broke rays,                 Sobbed to its rest.       And this was all the listening trees had heard,       Throug months that rounded into dusky years ;       But the low falling of the rain cloud's tears,                   Or passing bird.       Sometimes the deep, sad sea has sobbed and called,       As if it fain would break the deathly dream       That lies there ever, where the sun's bright gleam                  Darkens, appalled.       Through the long aisle the sound of wheels is hushed,       And the dank leaves lie there from Fall to Fall,       Untounched, save when with stepping's light and small,                A hare bath brushed.       Sometimes a wild deer comes with startled breath,       Awed by a stillness only broke by him :       Trembling, unharmed, where silence cold and dim,               Seems wed with death.       A vessel often leaves its rounding line       Along the blue edge of the tinted sea :       A type of home, that passes silently                  Giving no sign.       And the great moon comes up, a blinded saint,       Raising her luminous forehead, grand and still,       Where sorrow in the shadow of the hill                   Seemeth to faint.       Here Sorrow, Silence, Death, in dreary state       Look with dim eyes, into the restless main,       Moving their hands always to its refrain                Chill, desolate.       Along the road, from dark until day-light       No human creature goeth to and fo ;       Nothing, from Summer's het to Wintr's snow,                 But morn and night.                                            VIOLET   LEA Little Rock, Ark.       Additional Comments: FANNY (Fannie) GREEN BORLAND (1848AR-1879TN): Once a highly celebrated poetess and 'belle-of-the-ball' during reconstruction days. Fanny "Fannie" Green BORLAND was second born, September 1848 in "City of Roses", Little Rock, to Solon and Mary Isabel MELBOURNE (1824LA- 1862AR), while her father served as a United States Senator, orphaned in Princeton, Dallas county, Arkansas on New Years Day 1864 by death of her father near Houston, Texas, married in 1869 at Little Rock home of Colonel & Mrs O C GRAY, birthed one known son, lost husband in the Memphis 1878 yellow fever epidemic, died of yellow fever morning of 23 August 1879 in sister's home, at "Bluff City", Memphis, burial location unknown. Named Fanny Green (spelling in Solon's will), honoring Solon's aunt Fanny (Green) GODWIN born 1785, who along with her husband George GODWIN (1878VA-1866VA) raised Solon, later his first born son Thomas, in Suffolk, Nansemond County, Virginia. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/tn/shelby/newspapers/thedeser9nw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/tnfiles/ File size: 5.6 Kb