Aesthetics, the Arts, and Social Change

In their published work, and in their private papers, the Burleigh family consistently embraced poetry. Allusions to famous poets of the past were common. As editors, William, Charles, George and Cyrus all drew from the finest American poets of their time. The artist Charles Calistus Burleigh Jr. was also a published poet, though his output was thin. 

Poetry was, of course, a more important part of the landscape of expression in the nineteenth-century than it is now. A careful analysis of the poems utilized by the core generation of Burleighs, and their own poetic themes, reveals some interesting through-lines. The most important of these may be in the attention given to William Cowper.

One of William Henry Burleigh's earliest poems (1835) is a well-constructed sonnet on Cowper:

There was a cloud upon his being's sky,

     Denser than he might please, which cast a gloom

     More fearful than the darkness of the tomb

Upon his pensive spirit. To his eye,

No ray of hope was darted from on high;

     He deemed himself predestined to a doom

Hopeless and endless, and a cold despair

Hunk heavily on his heart, and rested there.

     Yet holiest affections found a home

Within that heart — and many a plaintive sigh,

     Laden with prayer, went upward to that God

     Whose chastening is in mercy — and the rod

Was then withdrawn: Death snatched the gloom away,

And poured upon his soul unending day!

(This version published as "Cowper" in The New - Yorker Oct 1, 1836; 2, 2, as part of the "Shreds and Patches" series.)

Cowper's influence on Black civil rights continued to echo through the oratory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who quoted the poet in his 1967 speech at Cleveland's Glenville High School. He places Cowper within the context of Black pride, and, significantly, at a high school, Dr. King preached Cowper's assertion that "the mind is the standard of the man."

"every black person in this country must rise up and say I’m somebody; I have a rich proud and noble history, however painful and exploited it has been. I am black, but I am black and beautiful.  And so we must be able to cry out with the eloquent poet [Cowper]: “Fleecy locks and black complexion cannot forfeit nature’s claim, Skin may differ but affection dwells in black and white the same. If I were so tall as to reach the pole or to grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul, the mind is the standard of the man.” And we must believe this firmly and live by it."

The Abolitionists, including William Burleigh, were among the earliest to grasp the importance of the aesthetic dimension - the way that the words sing in memorable rhythm, the impact of their import extended by their setting, a union of form and function.

We know that Prudence Crandall had a copy of Cowper's work, and obviously William Burleigh had been exposed to him, too. As these two were working with the Black women who came to Canterbury, I can imagine them as teachers sharing these poems with the students. The cross-fertilization of Black and white that happened there helped to build the tradition that still continues today; to quote from the stirring conclusion of Dr. King's speech, "we must keep moving. We must keep going. And so, if you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving."