The Buckley School's founder believed that all public speakers should hone their presentation skills by reading poetry out loud. We keep that worthwhile practice alive by including a poem in our magazine each month for you to read aloud. Above, an image of Sophie Jewett from 1889.
"Miss Jewett remained always singularly shy about her poetry and very self-critical. She would keep her poems in her desk for years before sending them forth."
– From the introduction to "The Poems of Sophie Jewett"
Sophie Jewett worked as a writer, a translator, and as a professor of English literature at Wellesley College.
Jewett was born in Moravia, New York, in 1861. Before she was ten years old, both her parents had died. Sophie, her two sisters, and her brother were taken to Buffalo, where they were brought up and educated by relatives.
Jewett and her sister, an artist, furthered their education through two years of travel around England and Italy. From these trips came Jewett’s book Italian Sketches.
Some of her work, including that book, were published under her mother's name, "Ellen Burroughs." She began publishing under her own name in 1896 with the volume of poetry, The Pilgrim and Other Poems. By then, she'd been teaching at Wellesley for seven years.
Though there's not a lot of information readily available about her life, you can find a bit more on Sophie Jewett here. A lengthy, conversational, and unattributed account of Jewett’s life can be found in the introduction to The Poems of Sophie Jewett, Memorial Edition, published in 1910, a year after her death.
Here's a poem from Jewett for you to read out loud.
Separation
Along the Eastern shore the low waves creep,
Making a ceaseless music on the sand,
A song that gulls and curlews understand,
The lullaby that sings the day to sleep.
A thousand miles afar, the grim pines keep
Unending watch upon a shoreless land,
Yet through their tops, swept by some wizard hand,
The sound of surf comes singing up the steep.
Sweet, thou canst hear the tidal litany;
I, mid the pines land-wearied, may but dream
Of the far shore; but though the distance seem
Between us fixed, impassable, to me
Cometh thy soul's voice, chanting love's old theme,
And mine doth answer, as the pines the sea.
