Excerpt from Pike County Ballads: And Other Poems

Pike County Ballads and other poems in this volume by Colonel John Hay represent in the best manner the spirit of our strong and independent sister-land across the Atlantic. Pike County Ballads do full justice to the raw material in the United States, and show a loyal temper in the rough. The other pieces show how the love of freedom speaks through finer spirits of the land, and, dealing with realities, can turn a life of action into music.

Colonel Hay has lived always in vigorous relation with the full life of the people whose best mind his poems represent. He is descended from a Scottish soldier, a John Hay, who, at the beginning of the last century, left his country to take service under the Elector-Palatine, and whose son went afterwards with his family to settle among the Kentucky pioneers. Dr. Charles Hay was the father of John Hay the poet, who was born on the 8th of October 1838, in the heart of the United States, at Salem in Indiana. When twenty years old he graduated at the neighbouring Brown University, where his fellow-students valued his skill as a writer. Then he studied for the Bar, and he was called to the Bar three years later, at Springfield, Illinois.

At Springfield, Abraham Lincoln practised as a barrister. Shrewd, lively, earnest, honest, he grudged help to a rogue.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Pike County Ballads (John Hay)