Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892)
Parsons attended the Boston Latin School and went on to become a dentist in Boston. He moved to England, spent time in Italy to study Italian literature, and then back to Boston in 1892. Somewhat of a scholar, he wrote a partial translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. In 1854, he wrote a book of poems (Poems) which was favorably reviewed, but never achieved popular success. Among other works, he wrote a wonderful little collection of sonnets in 1875, The Willey House & Sonnets (In 1826, a year after the Willey family moved into their Crawford Notch home in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a violent rain storm caused a mudslide that missed the house but killed the Willey couple and their two children, who were apparently attempting to escape the slide. Parsons's longer poem beautifully, and graphically, describes their fate).
In 1869, the Christian Examiner reviewed his work: “We refer to Thomas William Parsons, whose fine patient genius and exquisite workmanship, for years fully appreciated by the few who are critically familiar with our literature, still remain little known to the great reading public. His poems stand out in relief from the mass of American versification, by the ripe accomplishments of mind they show, by the artistic atmosphere they breathe, and by the rare combination in them of fullness of matter with finish of form. The strength of his thought, the genuineness of his humor, the delicate sureness of his touch, the profound tenderness of his feeling, the completeness of his artistic skill, the perfect vitality of his work, now appreciated by one and another, soon by more and more, will finally enroll him among the select classics of his land; destined to be honored ages after the mediocrities who at first surpassed them in fame have been forgotten.”
Further, questioning why his poetry was not more favorably received by the general public, despite their beauty, and beyond the fact that publishers and critics “have so done little for them,” the Examiner's reviewer concluded that “the secret is, that the quality of their merit prevents this; they lack something rough, pungent, sensational. Their quiet and unobtrusive charms escape the coarse and hurried observer. They require a more full equipment of mind, a more trained maturity of taste, more tenderness of emotion, more sustained patience of attention, than are furnished by the unscholarly, restless reader, who can feel nothing less harsh than a stab, and will bestow scarce a hasty glance on a sentiment or an idea. The dulcet notes of the lute can hardly be expected to work any charm in a rhinoceros, however choicely they are distilled into his ears."
Though a scathing commentary of the contemporary reading public, this does show that Parsons had a loyal following of his work, and was recognized, if ever so narrowly, for his excellence.
"The Mullein that Grows by Sudbury Woods," 1870
'Tis an awkward thing, with unmusical name,
The mullein that grows by the dusty road;
Yet oft to its woolly stalk I came
To watch what promise my mullein showed.
I had made a wish, and the stem I bent
To try whether fortune my wish would grant;
And this is all that my visits meant,
Morning and night, to the magical plant.
When I looked on it last, it was drooping still;
And I said, with disconsolate spirit, adieu
To the birch by the meadow, the beech on the hill,
To my walk in the wood, to my mullein, and you!
For this was my wish: that the one whom I love
(Whatever her blessed name may be),
As much as I value her smile above
All earthly treasure, might value me.
You patient ladies that watch its growth,
To my tremulous heart now the truth declare:
I charge you, I pray you, I put you on oath -
Does my mullein still droop, and must I despair?
Sudbury, is of course, the Town of Sudbury in Massachusetts. Mullein was thought to have powers to heal. It was also thought to be used by witches to cast spells, and so it's not surprising that the character in Parsons's poem uses it to discover the status of his love.