Lydia H. Sigourney--Antebellum American Poet

Lydia H. Sigourney
(1791 - 1865) American Poet and Educator

I recently became aware of another 'Lydia' and thought her poem Indian Summer is appropriate for this time of year, and nicely follows yesterday's post discussing the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. In his article in The Victorian Web titled, A Short Consideration of the Life of Lydia Sigourney, Matthew Koyle quotes Melissa Ladd Teed's description of her:

As a dedicated, successful writer, Lydia Sigourney violated essential elements of the very gender roles she celebrated. In the process, she offered young, aspiring women writers around the country an example of the possibilities of achieving both fame and economic reward.

Other researchers write about the influence this poet-writer enjoyed in her time. Sandra Zagarell of Oberlin College writes at Cengage.com:

Sigourney was enormously popular. In 1848 the respected publishers Cary and Hart issued her selected poems in their series of works by American poets, the preceding volumes having been devoted to three highly regarded male writers, Bryant, Longfellow, and N. P. Willis. She was also enormously productive: at her death in 1865 she had published over fifty books. Their range attests to the variety of forms in which antebellum writers could undertake to guide the public. She wrote communitarian narratives, educational volumes, advice manuals, travel literature, temperance pieces, meditative prose, and exemplary memoirs as well as a vast and varied quantity of poetry.

Indian Summer

WHEN was the redman's summer?

When the rose

Hung its first banner out? When the gray rock,

Or the brown heath, the radiant kalmia clothed?

Or when the loiterer by the reedy brooks

Started to see the proud lobelia glow

Like living flame? When through the forest gleamed

The rhododendron? Or the fragrant breath

Of the magnolia swept deliciously

Over the half-laden nerve?

No. When the groves

In fleeting colours wrote their own decay,

And leaves fell eddying on the sharpen'd blast

That sang their dirge; when o'er their rustling bed

The red deer sprang, or fled the shrill-voiced quail,

Heavy of wing and fearful; when, with heart

Foreboding or depress'd, the white man mark'd

The signs of coming winter: then began

The Indian's joyous season. Then the haze,

Soft and illusive as a fairy dream,

Lapp'd all the landscape in its silvery fold.

The quiet rivers, that were wont to hide

'Neath shelving banks, beheld their course betray'd

By the white mist that o'er their foreheads crept,

While wrapp'd in morning dreams, the sea and sky

Slept 'neath one curtain, as if both were merged

In the same element. Slowly the sun,

And all reluctantly, the spell dissolved,

And then it took upon its parting wing

A rainbow glory.

Gorgeous was the time

Yet brief as gorgeous. Beautiful to thee,

Our brother hunter, but to us replete

With musing thoughts in melancholy train.

Our joys, alas! too oft were woe to thee.

Yet ah! poor Indian! whom we fain would drive

Both from our hearts, and from thy father's lands,

The perfect year doth bear thee on its crown,

And when we would forget, repeat thy name.




-Lydia Sigourney