The dank and sulky tenements Are wilting weary with the heat; While from the doorways, children spill And clot the humid, huddled street. The pools of faces flood the stoops And dribble into every space, Until this packed humanity Seethes like a vat in every place! The sallow mothers with their babes; The playing, sprawling children there; The flaccid moldy aged men; The boys with their disheveled hair– This weltering humanity Is saturated with the heat That wedges into every crack, Pressing and beating on the street! But while a hurdy-gurdy trolls, A sentimental tinsel tune; And cars are droning down the tracks; And weary pallid mothers croon, In every eye, a flare or gleam Reveals the sea-shore in a dream!
This poem was part of Louis Ginsberg’s 1920 collection The Attic of the Past and Other Lyrics.
Young Flora stole one morn betimes, As Phoebus op’d the gate of day, Where herb and tree and floweret shines, With limpid lustre in his ray.
The Goddess bent o’er every blossom, The cool, the fragrant drop to sip, Which deep within its opening bosom Was treasured for her rosy lip.
The tears of night all brilliant now, Hung on a rose’s snowy breast; She gently kiss’d them off, when lo– The floweret blush’d to be caressed.
Since, have its leaves retained the glow, By modesty that moment given; Forgot their pure, their tintless snow, Though scarcely press’d by lips from Heaven.
The Essex County Park Commission built and planted the Weequahic Park rose garden in 1922, to a design by the Olmsted Brothers. It cost $2,353 and contained 86 varieties of roses, more than 1,400 plants in all.
“The Blush-Rose” is from the Newark Daily Advertiser for July 24, 1832.
Warder at ocean’s gate, Thy feet on sea and shore, Like one the skies await When time shall be no more! What splendors crown thy brow? What bright dread angel Thou, Dazzling the waves before Thy station great?
“My name is Liberty! From out a mighty land I face the ancient sea, I lift to God my hand; By day in Heaven’s light, A pillar of fire by night, At ocean’s gate I stand Nor bend the knee.
“The dark Earth lay in sleep, Her children crouched forlorn, Ere on the western steep I sprang to height, reborn: Then what a joyous shout The quickened lands gave out, And all the choir of morn Sang anthems deep.
“Beneath yon firmament, The New World to the Old My sword and summons sent, My azure flag unrolled: The Old World’s hands renew Their strength; the form ye view Came from a living mould In glory blent.
“O ye, whose broken spars Tell of the storms ye met, Enter! fear not the bars Across your pathway set; Enter at Freedom’s porch, For you I lift my torch, For you my coronet Is rayed with stars.
“But ye that hither draw To desecrate my fee, Nor yet have held in awe The justice that makes free,— Avaunt, ye darkling brood! By Right my house hath stood: My name is Liberty, My throne is Law.”
O wonderful and bright, Immortal Freedom, hail! Front, in thy fiery might, The midnight and the gale; Undaunted on this base Guard well thy dwelling-place: Till the last sun grow pale Let there be Light!
Aside from his long career in banking and finance, Edmund Clarence Stedman belonged to a Newark literary circle including Mary Mapes Dodge, Richard Watson Gilder and Abraham Coles. It was said that he inherited the poetic talents of his mother, Elizabeth Clementine Kinney.
Stedman’s ode was written for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, and appeared in Harper’s Weekly two days later.
The bright sun has been hid so long,– Such endless rains, such clouds and glooms! But now, as with a burst of song, The happy Summer morning blooms.
The brooks are full, it is their youth; No hint of shrunken age have they; They shout like children, and in truth, No human child so careless-gay.
How fresh the woods, each separate leaf Is shining in the joyful sun. Strange! I have half forgotten grief; I think that life has just begun.
In the 1860s Richard Watson Gilder worked as a correspondent and editor of the Newark Daily Advertiser. He frequently took charge of the selection and, sometimes, composition of poetry for its front pages. He went on to co-found the Newark Morning Register in 1869.
The lines above are taken from Gilder’s 1901 collection Poems and Inscriptions.
AMIDST the ranks who try by different ways, To purchase honours or to merit praise, The GOD-LIKE MAN how rare! how few like YOU Disinterested paths to fame pursue? You who lavish’d sums (the fruits of peace) To bless the present and succeeding race! To sing your praise MY infant muse is weak, But what SHE cannot, let this fabric speak; Yet deign t’ accept the tribute of my lay, For thanks is all a poet has to pay. O may your labours with success be crown’d And NEWARK still for lit’rature renown’d, So shall fair science bless our happy land, And in fame’s roll, your names immortal stand.
II
To Thee, most holy and most high, To Thee we tune our grateful praise; Thy deeds proclaim a GOD is nigh, DEEDS of renown and wondr’ous grace!
When doom’d to wear base Slavery’s chain, Our Land convuls’d, our danger great; Heav’n rais’d strong Pillars to maintain Our Liberties in Church and State.
Religion sigh’d, and Learning mourn’d, Their Temples ruin’d or defac’d; When God our times in mercy turn’d, New Temples rear’d, and Schools replac’d.
See Foes abash’d, abase their pride, And lift no more a tow’ring head; Lay menac’d plots of Rule aside, And own their Powers which God hath made.
Pretended claims to Blood or Birth, Can fix no Despot on our Throne; God, the wise Sov’reign of the Earth, To Man, the Rights of Man makes known.
What are the World’s wide Kingdoms, Isles, And States, but Seats of Tyrant-Sway! COLUMBIA, where Jehovah smiles, Shine free–more glorious far than they.
Patriots and Peers support her Cause, Culture and Arts enrich the Field; Wisdom inspires our equal Laws, And free-men pleas’d, obedience yield.
This Day conven’d, Harmonious Bands! We found a new fair Science’ name; Hence letter’d Youth, to foreign Lands Shall sound their Country’s growing Fame!
To Him whose Temple is all Space, Whose Altar, Earth, Sea, Skies! One Chorus let all Being raise All Nature’s Incense rise!
The first poem was recited – according to the New-York Journal or General Advertiser of January 12, 1775, where it appeared in print – to the trustees of Newark Academy by an unnamed student. The Academy’s original building on the upper commons (later named Washington Park) was burned during the Revolutionary War; it would be twelve years before the school reopened in a new location at Broad and Academy Streets. The dedication of this structure (shown in the image above) was the occasion for the second piece, a hymn printed in Woods’s Newark Gazette on June 28, 1792.
During its long history the Academy moved two more times in Newark – to High and William Streets in 1857, and First and Orange Streets in 1929 – before settling at its fifth and current home in suburban Livingston.
When the wild wind blows In its fearful might, And the pale moon throws But a feeble light: When the stars are at rest In their homes in the sky, And the light clouds haste In their swiftness by– I love on the craggy rock to stand, And brave the storm with a giant’s hand.
When the sea-gull screams O’er the rolling wave, And the sea-lion dreams In his lonely cave: When the sentinel sleeps On his weary post, And the wanderer weeps For the home he has lost– I gaze in pride on the world’s darkened mien– The dreary king of a dreary scene.
When the dark sea roars In its wakened wrath, And destruction lowers O’er the mariner’s path: When the cowardly slave Shrinks back in affright, And the nobly brave Turn away from the sight– I perch on the top of the sailless mast, And laugh when the whelming wave has past.
When the murderer goes, At the midnight hour, To deal his blows With a fiendish power: As he leans o’er the bed Of his destined prey, Who hears not his tread And who heeds not his way– I am there! I am there! at his right hand, I nerve his arm and I speed his brand.
On the tempest I ride On the bounding wave, From my island of pride Which the north seas lave: I hover when death And destruction are nigh, To hear the last breath And to catch the last sigh: Ye may see me at midnight when the wild blast howls loud, Abroad in the storm and arrayed in a shroud.
The roar of motorcycle engines was, for a short time, a feature of Sunday afternoons in Vailsburg. The Vailsburg Motordrome, constructed in 1912, was a high-banked, circular wooden racetrack with bleachers on top. It permitted speeds of up to ninety miles per hour. Two months after it opened, a horrific accident killed riders Eddie “Texas Cyclone” Hasha (pictured above), John Albright and six mostly young spectators, bringing motorcycle racing in Newark to an abrupt end. The shuttered Motordrome, damaged by a fire in 1915, was torn down along with the adjacent Electric Park. Vailsburg Park was built in their place.
“The Lay of the Demon of Night” appeared in the weekly New-Jersey Eagle of December 19, 1828.
Naiad and nymph in the forest are roaming; Everglades echo their unearthly tread; Weird are their songs and their forms in the gloaming; Answering voices or shades of the dead. Rudely the Indian ‘neath wigwam and bower Kneels in submission to Ignorance-power.
1916
Newark is now in the vigor of manhood. Eye of a Mentor, and brain of a State; Wielding a sceptre that banishes clanhood, And makes us all kith, and akin to the great. Rugged the heights from whose summits this hour Ken we the vision that Knowledge is power.
No spot to which we roam, Either o’er land or foam, Will ever be like home. As home is the pole Round which love doth roll, Keeping steadfast the soul.
The anniversary acrostics, by William J. Marshall, appeared in The Newarker of August 1916. Augustus Watters included the third, by an unknown author, in his small book Poems, printed in Newark in 1892.
In poets, poems sleep (all men are poets) like seeds dreaming in earth which wait for the awakening kiss of silver rain to free them from their spore bonds.
Some tight-shelled resist the rain until harsh cycles of heat/frost persuade them.
But whenever that catalytic moment comes to compel they rise humped heavy with cotyledons. Slowly slowly they will straighten and their own true leaves appear.
Neither poem nor seed can be urged before its time but each will have a flowering in the sun!
During her years in Newark Margaret Tsuda published two books of poems; the second, Urban river (1976), contained this piece.
Bopping down tenement steps down in red platform shoes through warm, dim, greasy halls. Carmen Miranda’s kid brother goes to meet his lover.
Listening to Sister Aretha wail in resounding, resounding soul blend with the many moods of Latin tongues. And he enters out on to the hot tropical Newark street. Tropical womb of dark neon pains.
Newark–trash with flash. Dark children swarming in darkening streets Sun descending on warm flesh Very distant white moon rising White salve cooling abstract concrete Earth Veins of crabgrass, dogshit, and fear Broad and Market Streets.
Warm chocolate and ivory loins–skin share a touch. Who will share the real experience of being gay in Newark?
The mural by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh pictured above honors 15-year-old Sakia Gunn, who was murdered in 2003 at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets. This crime and the scarce media attention it received sparked a new era of activism among LGBT Newarkers.
“Gay in Newark” appeared three decades earlier in the September 1973 GAANJ Speaks, the newsletter of the Gay Activists Alliance of New Jersey.
Swart with the grime of his crafts are the hands of him, Corded his muscles with energy stark; Stately the buildings and spacious the lands of him: Hall, fane and factory; meadow and park. Lofty his brow with the pride of his history, Kindled his eye with the light of his skill; Genius inventive that solves every mystery; Courage that wins by invincible will.
Centuries two and a half has his story been– Years crowned with triumphs of labor and lore; Burning undimmed has the lamp of his glory been; Open to all men his neighborly door. Now he is bidding us all to rejoice with him– Sons of your sire, bound by filial vow, Each of you loyally lift up your voice with him; Join in the slogan of Newark Knows How!
William Wurts was a musician and newspaper editor in Paterson, New Jersey. His father George Wurts, regarded as the dean of New Jersey journalists at the end of the nineteenth century, began his career as a reporter for the Newark Daily Advertiser.
“Father Newark” was published in The Newarker of May 1916.
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