“… one of the first poets to capture successfully the excitement of the modern city"
Edith began writing at an early age early for the local newspapers, and was encouraged by author Helen Hunt Jackson to send verse to more important periodicals. Edith gained national attention with her poetry when “Scribner's”, “The Atlantic Monthly”, “The Century” and other prominent magazines published her poems.
In 1884, Canadian poet Charles G.D. Roberts* wrote of her that "as far as I am aware her poems are not yet gathered in book form, and are therefore only to be obtained, few in number, by gleaning from the magazines and periodicals. Yet so red-blooded are these verses, of thought and of imagination all compact, so richly individual and so liberal in promise, that the name of their author is already become conspicuous.... We are justified in expecting much from her genius."
Edith’s first collection, entitled “A New Year's Masque and Other Poems” was published in 1885. In 1887 she moved to New York City, where she worked for “Harper's” and “Century Dictionary”. She lived in New York for the rest of her life and published more than 300 poems between 1890 and 1909.
Edith died on 13th September 1925 and on her death she was described as "one of the most distinguished American poets” by The New York Times.
Edith’s collection “Selected Poems” was published in 1926, a year after her death.
“THE CHILDREN AND THE FLAG”
The little children in my country kiss the American flag. MADAME VANDERVELDE
What of those children over the sea
That are beating about the world’s rough ways,
Like the tender blossoms from off a tree
That a sudden gale in Spring betrays?
The children? Oh, let them look for the sign
Of a wave-borne flag, thou land of mine!
On the old gray sea its course it holds,
Life for the famished is in its gift ....
And the children are crowding to kiss its folds,
While the tears of their mothers fall free and swift. —
And what of the flag their lips have pressed?
Oh, guard it for ever — That flag is blest.
Edith M. Thomas
From: “The Book of the Homeless - Le Livre des Sans-Foyer - a 1916 collection of essays, art, poetry, and musical scores”, edited by Edith Wharton and sold during WW1 for the benefit of the American Hostels for Refugees (with the Foyer Franco-Belge) and of the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916)
The book is now available as a free download courtesy of Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57584/57584-h/57584-h.htm
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_M._Thomas
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57584/57584-h/57584-h.htm
*Charles G.D. Roberts, honoured as the father of Canadian literature, was one of the older poets to serve in the First World War. Born in 1860, he had to lie about his age to join the army; he served as a troop instructor in Britain and as a war historian on the Western Front.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_G._D._Roberts
