William Gibson, U. S. N. |
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Riffs William Gibson, USN Augustus Ely Silliman |
a bibliography of works by and about navy poet William Gibson (1825-1887) like everything in melvilliana, a work in progress... Books A Vision of Faery Land and Other Poems. Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1853. Poems of
Many Years and Many Places. Boston: Lee & Shepard; and New York:
Sailing Directions for the Kattegat, Sound, and Great and Little Belts, to the Baltic Sea. Compiled from Danish and Swedish surveys. United States Hydrographic Office 70. Originally published by Charles Wilson (London, 1865). Rearranged and corrected from the latest official notices and charts, by Commander William Gibson. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1881. The Poems of Goethe: Consisting of His Ballads and Songs and Miscellaneous Selections, Done into English Verse. Trans. William Gibson. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1883; and London: Simpkin Marshall & Co., 1883. Reprinted in the Library of Foreign Poetry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1886).
Magazine Pieces Collected in Poems of Many Years and Many Places (1881) “Niagara.” The United States Democratic Review 41 (April 1858): 296-299. Subscribed “WASHINGTON, March, 1858.” “Faith Militant.” United States Service Magazine 1 (April 1864): 402-403. Signed, “WILLIAM GIBSON, Lieutenant-Commander, U. S. N. Off Charleston, S. C., February 14, 1864.” Reprinted in Littell’s Living Age 81 (7 May 1864): 242. “The Doves of Saint Mark.” The Galaxy 16 (August 1873): 237-238. Lacking one stanza that appears only in Poems of Many Years and Many Places. “Persephone.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 49 (July 1874): 209-212. Illustrated. Subscribed “SYRACUSE, SICILY, May, 1873.” “Pisa.” Atlantic Monthly 34 (August 1874): 144. Significantly revises “Pisa” as previously printed in A Vision of Faery Land (1853). “Sibylla Cumana.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 49 (November 1874): 773-776. Illustrated. Subscribed, “NAPLES, August, 1873.” “Hymn to Freya.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 53 (August 1876): 384. “Empedocles.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 54 (February 1877): 383-385. “St. Francis of Assisi.” The Catholic World 25 (April 1877): 11-14. Unsigned. Formally apostrophizes the poet’s wife. “La Festa dello Statuto.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 55 (June 1877): 64-65. “The Brides of Christ.” I. St. Dorothea; II. St. Cecelia; III. St. Agnes. The Catholic World 25 (June 1877): 420-421. Unsigned. Begins series of nine sonnets, effectively working “the poet’s second mine” that Derwent foresaw in saints’ legendaries (NN Clarel 221; 2.26.93). “The Brides of Christ.” IV. St. Catherine; V. St. Margaret; VI. St. Barbara. The Catholic World 25 (July 1877): 556-557. “The Brides of Christ.” VII. St. Agatha; VIII. St. Lucia; IX. St. Ursula. The Catholic World 25 (August 1877): 701-702. “The Bells.” The Catholic World 26 (October 1877): 88-89. Unsigned. Reprinted as “The Bells of Florence” in Poems of Many Years and Many Places, 43-45. “The Valley of the Yomouri.” Island of Cuba. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 57 (November 1878): 828-829. Illustrated. “Art Sonnets.” I. Two Madonnas. The Catholic World 28 (November 1878): 158. Unsigned. Begins four-part series. “Art Sonnets.” II. Fra Angelico. The Catholic World 28 (December 1878): 344. “Art Sonnets.” III. The Fates of Michael Angelo. The Catholic World 28 (January 1879): 441. “Art Sonnets.” IV. On an Etruscan Tomb. The Catholic World 28 (February 1879): 619. “Holy Week in Rome.” Church of Trinità Dei Monti. The Catholic World 29 (May 1879): 284-285. “The Voyage of St. Brandan.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 58 (April 1879): 768-769. “The Last Rose of Summer.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 59 (September 1879): 594-595. "Ancestral Worship." The United Service (November 1880): 541-542.
Uncollected Poems by William Gibson "The Unattainable." The Broadway Journal 2,15 (October 18, 1845).
"The Sibyl."
Broadway Journal 2,16 (October 25, 1845). Signed "W. G." “Life on Board a Man-of-War.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 46 (March 1873): 481-494. Illustrated prose sketch intermixed with poetry, including “Around the World” and “The Admiral” (without their titles, assigned only in Poems of Many Years and Many Places). Harper’s Table of Contents erroneously gives the author’s rank as Commodore. "Naples."
United Service (July 1879): 336-448. "An Island in the Air." United Service (March 1880): 326-327. “The Gate of the Orient.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 62 (April 1881): 785. “A Psalm of Life.” The Catholic World 33 (August 1881): 624-625. "The
Figure-Head of the 'Delaware.'" United Service (October
1881): 423-427. “The Linnet’s Echo Song." Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 64 (December 1881): 82. “Allegoria Maritima.” The Catholic World 34 (February 1882): 711-715. “The Anchor.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 66 (January 1883): 192. “The Old Man
of the Mountain.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 68 (May 1884):
851. “Indian Summer.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 73 (October 1886): 665-666. Strong thematic and some verbal affinities with Melville’s “Pontoosuce.”
Reviews "A Vision of Faery Land, and Other Poems." Literary World (June 25, 1853). A Vision of Faery Land and Other Poems. Albion (August 6, 1853). “A Vision of Fairy [sic] Land, and Other Poems.” The United States Democratic Review 42 (October 1858): 307-315. Unsigned. New York Evening Post (13 January 1881). Poems of Many Years and Many Places “a work of good literary quality, inspired by genuine poetic feeling, though not marked by any high measure of capacity for poetic expression. The pieces are good as literature, and respectable though not in any way noteworthy as poetry. They are such things as any educated gentleman with a fair sense of the poetic aspect of things might write if he desired to do so. The book is prettily made in a small volume, with red edges.” “Many Years and Many Places.” A Volume of Poetry on a Wide Range of Subjects, by Commander William Gibson, U. S. N. Boston Daily Globe (16 January 1881). “Editor’s Literary Record.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 62 (May 1881): 954. Brief notice of Poems of Many Years and Many Places. “Books of the Month.” Atlantic Monthly 47 (March 1881): 447. Short notice of Poems of Many Years and Many Places “which will recall to the dilligent reader verses which he met long ago in the early literary magazines, and some which have since appeared in The Atlantic and elsewhere.” “New Publications.” Poems of Many Years and Many Places. The Catholic World 32 (March 1881): 854-856. Unsigned. Erroneously refers to the author’s rank as Commodore. “New Books.” New York Times (20 March 1881). Unsigned review of Poems of Many Years and Many Places. “Recent Poetry.” The Nation 32 (5 May 1881): 320. Reviews Poems of Many Years and Many Places. “Mere verbiage almost nothing in his unambitious little volume can be called.” [Lathrop, G. P.] “Whittier’s King’s Missive and Other Recent Poetry.” The Atlantic Monthly 47 (June 1881): 859. Poems of Many Years and Many Places mentioned in passing. The Independent (16 June 1881). Rev. Poems of Many Years and Many Places. Christian Union (29 June 1881). "Some Recent Poetry." “Recent Poetry.” The Nation 42 (27 May 1886): 451. Reviews Holt reprint of The Poems of Goethe (1886). On the whole “a most deserving effort,” although the translator is faulted for bad taste in the rendering of dahin as thither and in certain physiological allusions (“My bowels burning!”). Recollects that Poems of Goethe “is not its author’s first attempt in literature; and his previous volume of poems, although it contained no translations, yet took its motto from Goethe.” “Goethe’s Lyric Poems.” New York Times (25 July 1886). Unsigned review of Holt reprint of The Poems of Goethe (1886). Gibson, H. G. “The Mutiny of the Ewing.” Sunset 12 (March 1904): 422-426. Horatio Gates Gibson recalls his brother’s central involvement in the Ewing mutiny and celebrates his military and literary achievements as follows: “My brother, afterward Commander Gibson, lived to take an active part in all the naval operations of the civil war from the Potomac to Florida, and was commended for “characteristic gallantry.” He has given to the world gems of verse that mark him as one of the poets of America. This graceful tribute to his poetic genius may not be altogether out of place here in this relation of the most tragic incident of his life of perilous service from a school-boy midshipman (and before) to that of a commander in the navy of the United States: Scarcely any news could have more surprised and shocked me than that of Commander Gibson’s death. We do not associate poets with either old age or disease, and he has long seemed to me as one of the immortals. If I had chosen the one gifted American whom I had not seen, and still wished to see, it would have been he, and I had long kept in mind this anticipated pleasure; and (so) expressed to him as I had long wished to do personally my deep appreciation of his genius. No American poet, unless Bayard Taylor, at his very highest, in such a poem, for instance, as his Prince Deucalion, at all touched or reached to the high qualities of his sensitive imagination. No English poets, save Keats and Shelley, had so felt and expressed in song the delicate spirit of the Greeks and their mythology. Other sides and qualities as a poet he also had in more than an abundance. Indeed, compared with his merits as a poet, the appreciation of him has been as yet small and inadequate, because the flight of his song has been so high (426).”
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