Introduction
Born: August 10, 1841, Manchester, New York.
Died: October 20, 1913, East Orange, New Jersey.
Buried: Rosedale Cemetery, Orange, New Jersey.
Pseudonyms:
- Aunt May
- Aunt Mary
Born: August 10, 1841, Manchester, New York.
Died: October 20, 1913, East Orange, New Jersey.
Buried: Rosedale Cemetery, Orange, New Jersey.
Pseudonyms:
Daughter of a Methodist minister, Lathbury studied art in Worcester, Massachusetts, and taught art and French at the Newbury Academy, Vermont, and in New York.
She contributed pieces to St. Nicholas, Harper’s Young People, and Wide Awake.
She was associated with the Chautauqua Movement near Chautauqua, New York, and was known as the poet laureate of Chautauqua.
Regarding her talent for art and verse, she said that one day she heard a voice she believed was God, saying:
Remember, my child, that you have a gift of weaving fancies into verse and a gift with the pencil of producing visions that come to your heart; consecrate these to Me as thoroughly as you do your inmost spirit.
From books, I turn me to the Book:
As pilgrims read the legend o’er
Upon a temple’s carven door,
To this unveilèd Word I look.
Forever—so the fathers taught—
Behind its quaintly lettered gate
Pure presences of spirit wait
To lead the seeker to the Sought.
I read—and all my spirit faints!
Be holy–perfect—pure and true;
Love God, and His commandments do,
If thou wouldst stand among His saints.
Thee only, Source of good, I seek
Yet naught of good, no holy thing,
Have these unhallowed hands to bring,
These lips no fitting word to speak.
Perhaps, if years of learning lift
My life above its earth, to be
A soul that suns itself in Thee,
Thou will accept the humble gift.
Perhaps—yet, Lord, forgive the thought!
I stifle in an air made dense
With sacrifice that breathes offense
To Love, whose gifts are all unbought.
Mary Artemisia Lathbury
Out of the Darkness into Light, 1879