Adams as Poet
John Quincy Adams once wrote, "Could I have chosen my own genius and
condition, I would have made myself a great poet."1 Although
literary fame would escape the sixth president of the United States, throughout
his life
Adams was a serious reader and writer of poetry. Adams's
poetic efforts included secular verse, hymns, and versifications of the Psalms.
He also translated
poems into English, including Christoph Martin Wieland's fairy-tale epic Oberon (the
translation went unpublished until 1940). His long poem, Dermot
MacMorrogh or the Conquest of Ireland, met with poor reviews; one
reviewer, commenting
on Adams's cover page byline, avers:
Indeed, it is that short sentence of four words,–By
John Quincy Adams,–to which Dermot Mac Morrogh
will be solely indebted for all the attention it will receive.
Were
it not for this
magic sentence, we doubt if
many readers would get further than the middle of the first
Canto; and we are quite certain that none would ever reach
the end of
the second.
After Adams's death, many of his poems were collected and published in Poems
of Religion and Society (1848). The book's editors, Senators Thomas
Hart Benton (Mo.) and John Davis (Mass.), looked favorably upon Adams's short
verse, going
as far to say that "some of his 'Hymns' are among the finest devotional
lyrics in our language." One of the hymns appearing in the book is "O
God, with Goodness All Thy Own," a reworking of Psalm 67:
O GOD, with goodness all thy own,
In mercy cause thy face to shine;
So shall thy ways on earth be known,
Thy saving health and power divine:
O, let the gladdening nations sing,
And praise thy name with hallowed mirth,
For thou of righteousness art King,
And rulest all the subject earth.
O, let the people praise the Lord;
The people all thy praise express;
And earth her plenty shall afford,
And God, yea, our own God, shall bless;
Our God his blessing shall bestow;
His power, his goodness, shall appear;
And all the ends of earth shall know
And worship him with holy fear.
Although Adams's poetry did not long remain in public consciousness, the first
poem in Poems of Religions and Society, "The
Wants of Man" (originally
published 1841) briefly surfaced again in the literary world upon its inclusion
by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Parnassus, a collection
of Emerson's favorite poems.
Notes
1.
Paul
C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private
Life (New York, Knopf:
1997), 231. [catalog
record]
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