Showing posts with label Samuel L. Trusty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samuel L. Trusty. Show all posts

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Immortality in Kansas City

Found this item too late for inclusion in my Notes and Queries article (forthcoming September 2018 but published online now). As explained therein, the reprinting of "Immortality" in the Kansas City Bar Bulletin Volume 15, Number 2 (December 1938) gave due credit on page 18 to
Clare Harner, in 'The Gypsy.' 
I did not guess how KC lawyer Samuel L. Trusty, the eulogist who recited "Clare Harner's beautiful little poem of 'Immortality'" at the funeral service for Benjamin D. Pugh, knew about The Gypsy: all poetry magazine where "Immortality" had appeared in the December 1934 issue. Turns out, Trusty could have copied or clipped it from the local newspaper. The entire poem was reprinted in the Kansas City Times (morning edition of the Kansas City Star) on Friday, February 8, 1935 and attributed, just as in the Kansas City Bar Bulletin more than three years later, to
Clare Harner, in "The Gypsy."
Kansas City Times (Kansas City, Missouri) - February 8, 1935
via GenealogyBank

IMMORTALITY. 

Do not stand
   By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
   I do not sleep—

I am the thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints in snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain,
As you awake with morning's hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.

Do not stand
   By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
   I did not die.
Clare Harner, in "The Gypsy."
[As reprinted in the Kansas City Times on February 8, 1935.]