Title:"An
Acrostic on the Pleasures of Beauty," Poem by George M. Horton, [ca. 1835]: Electronic Edition.
Author: Horton, George Moses, 1798?-ca. 1880.
Editor: Erika Lindemann
Funding from the State Library of North Carolina supported the
electronic publication of this title.
Text transcribed by
Erika Lindemann
Images scanned by
Mara E. Dabrishus
Text encoded by
Sarah Ficke
First Edition,
2005
Size of electronic edition: ca. 11K
Publisher: The University Library, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
2005
The electronic edition is a part of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American
South.
Languages used in the text:
English
Revision history:
2005-03-15, Sarah Ficke finished TEI/XML encoding.
Part of a series:
This transcribed document is part of a digital collection, titled True and Candid
Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students in North
Carolina
written by
Lindemann, Erika
Source(s):
Title of collection: Pettigrew Family Papers (#592), Southern
Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Title of document: "An
Acrostic on the Pleasures of Beauty," Poem by George M. Horton, [ca. 1835]
Author: George M. Horton
Description: 1 page, 2 page images
Note:
Call number 592 (Southern Historical
Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Topics covered: Writing by Non-Students Social and Moral Issues/Women and Women's Roles
Editorial practices The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 5 of
the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Originals are in the Southern Historical Collection, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved. DocSouth staff created a 600 dpi uncompressed TIFF file for each image. The TIFF images were then saved as JPEG images at 100 dpi for web access. Page images can be viewed and compared in parallel with the
text. Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the
trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line. Letters, words and passages marked as deleted or added in originals
have been encoded accordingly. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed
as entity references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as ". All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as '. All em dashes are encoded as —. Indentation in lines has not been preserved.
For more information about transcription and other editorial decisions,
see Dr. Erika Lindemann's explanation under the section Editorial Practices.
Document Summary
An acrostic on the name Julia Shepard.
"An
Acrostic on the Pleasures of Beauty," Poem by
George
M. Horton
, [ca. 1835]1
Horton, George Moses, 1798?-ca. 1880.
Page 1
"An Acrostic on the Pleasures of Beauty"
Joy like the morning breaks from one divine
Unveiling streams which can not fail to shine
Long have I strove to magnify her name
Imperial floating on the breeze of fame—
Attracting beauty must delight afford
Sought of the world and of the Bards adored
Her grace of form and heart alluring pow'rs
Express her more than fair, the queen of flow'rs
Pleasure fond nature's stream from beauty sprang
And was the softest strain the
Muses
sang
Reverting sorrows into speachless joys
Dispeling gloom which human peace destroys—Beauty.
But Goddess thou the di'mond of the fair
Willt from thy brow repel affection's prayer
And smile to hear the unavailing sigh
With tears disolving from thy suppliant's eye—
But light upon the beau to thee assignd
And leave all els with disregard behind
Then softly bind affection's sacred chain
Never thro life to be broke off again
1 verso page
Endnotes:
1. Pettigrew Family Papers, SHC. Written in
Horton's
hand, the poem is an acrostic on "Julia
Shepard," whose name is spelled out by the first letter of each of
the poem's first twelve lines. On the verso,
Horton
wrote "For Mr/Pettigrew." Because both
Charles Lockhart Pettigrew
and
William Shepard Pettigrew
, sons of
Ebenezer Pettigrew
, attended the
University in the 1830s, it is unclear who
commissioned the poem or precisely when it was written. At the bottom of the
poem someone has completed a math problem, subtracting twelve from twenty-seven
to get fifteen, then drawing a line under fifteen and writing seven below
it.
A second hand has numbered the sheet [11]. This number represents
someone's attempt to order the following seven poems, attributed to
Horton
, in Series 3.7, Folder 568, of the Pettigrew Family
Papers:
"The
Emigrant Girl,""On Ghosts,""An Acrostic (Mr Davenports address to his lady),""An Acrostic (His lady's reply),""An Acrostic (To their little daughter),""The pleasures of a College life," and
"An Acrostic on the pleasures of beauty."
The first five poems in the series, transcribed by the same hand (but not
Horton's
) and on the same type of paper, contain the
following inscription: "The following was written by
George Haughton
the negro poet at
Chapel
Hill, in the year 1836./W. S. Pettigrew." "The pleasures of a College life" is dated
1831.