The American Keats
That is the title which admirers of his
poetry have bestowed upon Donald Parson,
ascribed by many as one of the greatest
poets of today, ffis home is at Pinehurst.
MY subject is
п
highly cultured
and aristocratic Xortherner,
a product of one of the great¬
est among American universities;
with wealth and social position. He
could have made his home anywhere
from Maine to California; but he
concluded to pitch his tent at Pine¬
hurst, Mecca of Moore, a fact which
of itself shows that he is u man of
excellent taste and discriminating
judgment. By vocation ho is a poet;
by avocation he is a sportsman.
We Carolinians are so commercial
and materialistic that most of us
have come to look upon a he-poet as
a sissy and a softie; but my brethren
this is all wrong. My old professor of
English, “Old Slick” Sledd, was him¬
self a poet of parts as you will know
if you are acquainted with his excel¬
lent “From Cliff and Scaur”; yet he
was not only red-blooded, but red¬
headed ; and he could on occasion, use
English noted for the quality of its
strong virility.
A Man of Many Parts
So just to dispel any lingering
doubts on this subject in the minds of
my readers, I will jot down a few
stray and quite random facts to show
that my subject is not only a real he-
man but that he possesses all the
strong virility pertaining to robust
manhood. He is one of the founders
of the Academy of American Poets.
He has twice been President of the
Tin Whistle Society of Pinehurst,
the world-famous golfing organization.
As a golfer he enjoys a national repu¬
tation, and for three seasons he carried
off the championship of that organi¬
zation. He was one of the organizers
of the Bath Club of Miami, Florida;
and also of the Indian Creek Golf
Club of the same resort city, whose
course he assisted in designing. He
also belongs to the Chevy Chase Golf
Club of Washington, where he offi¬
cially broke the course record in com¬
petition. Satisfied now? Xo? Very
well.
As a yachtsman he is almost in the
class with the late Sir Thomas Lip-
ton. He is a prominent member of the
New York Yacht Club, and when the
By R. C. LAWRENCE
present global war rolled around, as
was inevitable after the Treaty of
Versailles, he loaned his yacht to the
government, and was himself placed
in command of it, serving on danger¬
ous coastal picket patrol from Nor¬
folk north to Canadian waters. If
you still arc not convinced, hear ye
this:
He is an ardent disciple of Isaak
Walton, whose “Compleat Angler” lie
knows from kiver to kiver. At his
home he has a trophy room where his
ficst may see Atlantic salmon from
ew Brunswick; sailfish from Flor¬
ida waters; and a bona fide brook
trout weighing six pounds, which won
tho prize as the largest fontinalis
(of course you know what that is)
taken in the waters of the United
States in that particular year of our
Lord.
Donald Parson.
He is a man of brilliant parts, for
he is on expert at contract bridge.
There is a rumor that old man Ely
Culbertson himself rated Parson as
among the first ten players on the field
of the nation. Some years since, in a
nation-wide contest, he took the prize
in contract bridge, this being noth¬
ing less than a tour of Europe for the
poet and his wife, with all expenses
paid. They visited France, Switzer¬
land, Austria, Germany, England and
other countries.
It was this trip which led him
into the field of poetry and caused the
production of his first fine volume,
for the art and music of the old
world, of which he had long dreamed,
lay before him, a perfect mine of un¬
explored treasure. Mona Lisa and the
Sistine Madonna so moved his poetic
soul* that each evoked sonnets of rare
beauty from his poetic pen ; and almost
before he knew it, his productions
had increased until he had finished
his first volume, “Glass Flowers in
Harvard.”
Quality Rather Than Quantity
The poems of Parson are not volu¬
minous in quantity but they possess
rare excellence in quality. Our gifted
genius, John Charles McNeill, left
behind him but two thin volumes,
“Songs Merry and Sad” and “Lyrics
from Cotton Land”; yet theso demon¬
strated that he possessed the divine
spark which distinguishes tho true
genius.
My subject worships at the shrine
of Keats, and has been called by sev¬
eral most competent critics, the
"American Keats.” He finds his best
expression in the sonnet, yet when I
was in college ’way back in the last
century, I was told that the sonnet
is the most difficult form of poetic
construction, so that few have mas¬
tered it. But if you will read his own
production “At Keats' Grave” you
will perhaps understand why Thomas
Moult included it in his anthology of
the best American verse. It is said that
Julia Ward Howe rose during tho
night to dash off her matchless “Battle
Hymn of the Republic” in one burst
( Continued on page Iweniy-five)
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