O Pinion

Yesterday, I wrote about Charles Dickinson, and I shared his poem “The Children.”  In my research, I found that Hezekiah Butterworth once called this work by Dickinson “the second most popular American poem.”  Hmm…I wonder what he thought was the first most popular American poem?  More on that later in this post.  More importantly, though, is  who the hell was Hezekiah Butterworth?

From a quick check on ol’ Hezekiah, I found that he was an author and poet as well as a platform lecturer, “speaking on education, hymnology, and his travels.”   On hymnology, I found Butterworth’s, “The Story of the Hymns and Tunes,” co-written with Theron Brown, HERE.

I also checked out a few poems by Butterworth, and “The Broken Pinion” (shown below) immediately called to mind Dickinson’s “If I can stop one heart from breaking.”  If you’re familiar at all with Dickinson’s poem, you’ll understand the connection at once after reading just the first stanza of Butterworth’s poem.
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Overall, Butterworth’s poetry – and poems by other now-forgotten poets from the 19th century which I’ve investigated in recent posts – is what I expected.  Steady, metrical rhythms; garden-variety rhymes; pedestrian and ponderous images; grandiloquent and archaic “poetic” language. Much of it is laden with moralizing piety.  “The Broken Pinion” takes its pious turn in the second stanza.  Lesson learned, Hezekiah:  A life stricken by sin will never soar as high again. Yada, yada, yada.

Dickinson’s seven lines says so much more than Butterworth’s without the holier-than-thou religiosity.

Am I being too harsh?  I mean, that first stanza from Butterworth is…nice…like a Hallmark movie is nice.  It’s not…bad.  It’s just a set-up, though, to preach to us reprobates destined for damnation.
By the way, Rev. Frank M. Lamb – and others too – set Butterworth’s poem to music, and Butterworth discussed the tune in The Story of the Hymns and Tunes.  See below. 

Returning now to Butterworth’s assertion that Charles Dickinson’s “The Children” was “the second most popular American poem,” what did he think was the “first most popular”? 

Well, I can’t say for sure.  I couldn’t find a definitive answer to that question.  However, based on background info I found on Butterworth, I wonder – I just wonder – did he consider his own Thanksgiving poem, “Five Kernels of Corn,” to be the apex of popular verse?  He did seem to hold a high opinion of the work, and it was rather popular at the time.  This is just speculation on my part, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case.

For more information on Hezekiah Butterworth, click HERE,