Alice Cary (1820–1871), one of nine children in an Ohio farm family, shared literary aspirations with her younger sister Phoebe. After their mother’s death, their father’s second wife discouraged their efforts at writing, to the extent of denying them candles at night after the day’s work was done. Nevertheless, poems by both sisters continued to appear widely in newspapers, garnering acclaim from such critics as Edgar Allan Poe. A joint book of poetry, “Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary,” appeared in 1849. The next year, their shared career established, the sisters moved to New York City, where they would spend the rest of their lives. Alice Cary wrote for the leading magazines of the day, as well as producing novels for children, before her death from tuberculosis at fifty-one. “The West Country,” today’s Poem of the Day, illuminates in its common-meter abab quatrains the native heroism of simple working people.

The West Country 
by Alice Cary 

Have you been in our wild west country? then 
   You have often had to pass 
Its cabins lying like birds’ nests in 
   The wild green prairie grass. 

Have you seen the women forget their wheels 
   As they sat at the door to spin— 
Have you seen the darning fall away 
   From their fingers worn and thin, 

As they asked you news of the villages 
   Where they were used to be, 
Gay girls at work in the factories 
   With their lovers gone to sea! 

Ah, have you thought of the bravery 
   That no loud praise provokes— 
Of the tragedies acted in the lives 
   Of poor, hard-working folks! 

Of the little more, and the little more 
   Of hardship which they press 
Upon their own tired hands to make 
   The toil for the children less: 

And not in vain; for many a lad 
   Born to rough work and ways, 
Strips off his ragged coat, and makes 
   Men clothe him with their praise. 

___________________________________________ 

With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.