William Herbert Carruth (1859-1924)

"Born in Ossawatomie, Kansas, in 1859; a graduate of the State University, in which he is now Professor of German Language and Literature.  He received the degree of M.A. at Harvard in 1889.  He is a joint author of the History of Municipal Suffrage in Kansas , and coeditor of Sunflowers ,—poems of his university.  His birthplace recalls Mr. Stedman's poem, and he has himself written a sonnet on John Brown. (Crandall)

O Grave, Where Is Thy Victory

For twenty years did Nature wait without,
Besetting that storm-beaten tenement,
Claiming her debt.  From door to door she went,
Rude battering with all her hostile rout;
And we who, helpless watching, stood about
While frail walls tottered and light bolts were bent,
Thinking each day to see some fatal rent,
Did marvel much that house should be so stout.
But Love was there, the Lord of Life and Death,
And held the importunate enemy at bay;
Yet when his work was done, all peacefully,
As dawn grows day, Life yielded up his breath,
And, led by Love Immortal, went away
Surrendering to a vanquished enemy.

(Text from Representative Sonnets by American Poets)


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