Charles Dawson Shanly (1811-1875)
Shanly, a poet, artist and editor, was born in Dublin, Ireland and attended Trinity College. He moved to a 600-acre family farm in Upper Canada in 1836. They named it “Thorndale.” He fought in the rebellion of 1837, and worked for the Public Works Department until becoming an editor of Punch in Canada, a comic publication. He eventually moved to New York, contributed to several publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, and helped found Vanity Fair, eventually becoming its editor and a frequent contributor. In 1875, suffering from lung trouble, he moved to Arlington, Florida, where he passed away two months later at age 64. He wrote many well-known poems about the Civil War, but his most famous work is “The Walker of the Snow,” a ballad about a ghostly figure named Shadow Hunter: “I will tell you as we go,-/The blight of the Shadow-hunter,/who walks the midnight snow.”
His poem “November,” which appeared in The Galaxy in 1875, shows his love for landscape and his knowledge of its details. It suggests to me, a detailed landscape painting he might have produced from observing this complex scene. In the November 2011 issue of the Old Farmer's Almanac, a couple lines were quoted:
"E'en in these bleak November days
There's gladness for the heart that heeds."
“November”
Old Frost the silversmith has come:
His crisping touch is on the weeds;
The lingering flowers must now succumb
And sing their death-song to the reeds;
The purple phlox that bends its head
With mournful gaze the marsh-pool o'er,
To-morrow may lie limp and dead,
Its feathery tufts to flaunt no more.
The reeds that were so tall and slim,
And grow so straight a while ago,
Will bow their heads before the grim
Old monitor that warns of snow;
Already has the golden-rod
Its jewels cast unto the breeze
And the cotton-weed with blackened pod
Weeps mutely near the willow-trees
Yet o'er the marsh a glory flies
As, shimmering in the misty gleam,
The gossamer's filmy meshes rise
Like motes that dance in a sun-beam;
And to the mind this fancy comes,
That haply o'er those silver threads
Some telegraphic elf-news hums
Its way to insect hearts and heads.
Through the wide reaches frequent rings
The sharp crack of the fowler's gun;
From the marsh-pond the wild-duck springs.
The plover's wings flash in the sun;
Unto the city gunner's shot
Small warblers in the sedges fall.
"All's meat that comes unto his pot,"
The little brown marsh-wren and all.
O'er these low meadows hangs a spell
That holds a strange, poetic charm:
I hear it in the far cow-bell
As vagrant cattle seek the farm.
E'en in those bleak November days
There's gladness for the heart that heeds.
The marsh to me no gloom conveys
Though the gray frost be on the weeds.