Vox Populi
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Helen Hunt Jackson: Poppies on the Wheat
Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore. The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn’s gain,
But I,—I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.
Public Domain
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885)
Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to academic Calvinist parents, poet, author, and Native American rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson (born Helen Maria Fiske) was orphaned as a child and raised by her aunt. Jackson was sent to private schools and formed a lasting childhood friendship with Emily Dickinson. At the age of 21, Jackson married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt and together they had two sons. Jackson began writing poetry only after the early deaths of her husband and both sons.
Jackson published five collections of poetry, including Verses (1870) and Easter Bells (1884), as well as children’s literature and travel books, often using the pseudonyms “H.H.,” “Rip van Winkle,” or “Saxe Holm.” Frequently in poor health, she moved to Colorado on her physician’s recommendation and married William Sharpless Jackson there in 1875.
Moved by an 1879 speech given by Chief Standing Bear, Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor (1881), an exposé of the rampant crimes against Native Americans, which led to the founding of the Indian Rights Association. In 1884 she published Ramona, a fictionalized account of the plight of Southern California’s dispossessed Mission Indians, inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Jackson was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985.
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This biography is borrowed from the Poetry Foundation website. Included in Vox Populi for noncommercial, educational purposes only.
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You all said it. And it’s a stunning, gorgeous sonnet.
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indeed.
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Such a moving sonnet — & such a courageous one. Thanks, Michael.
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Thank you, Laure-Anne.
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I can read and love poems like this and Robinson’s “Sheaves”all day long! And heaven let me write some too!
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I like the music of this poem, and I also admire the personal courage of the poet. She had a difficult life and yet did so much for others.
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I cannot begin to imagine how much pain Helen Hunt Jackson endured and survived in her life—the early loss of both parents, of her first husband and their two sons. Both children! Yet look at what she did, what capacity for empathy she had, and that she did something with it, though her writing and activism. Her sonnet here echoes Wordsworth’s sonnet “I Wandered Lonely,” in the comfort certain apparently small memories can bring years after the event. It’s not about flowers.
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I agree, Maura. HHJ was a remarkable person who suffered a great deal throughout her life, and yet she still had the energy and commitment to use her talents to write poetry and be, as we call it now, a political activist.
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Thanks for your comments. They touch me deeply. When my wife Pam died 7 years ago, her last word was Flowers. Then I wrote about flowers as the emblems of my grief. Over time they became gateways to the memories of our shared joy. Now, as in this poem as a beautiful presence, alive and stunning. Jackson’s sonnet reminds me how from grief can sometimes grow beauty. Her biography reminds me that beauty and activism can go hand in hand, somehow.
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Beautifully said, Jim. Thank you.
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In our era, when even colors are politicized, this wonder-filled poem by Ms. Jackson shows how a sense of a special place can have deep meaning for us. Her words make the Ancona hills, as they looked to her, work transcendent embodiment, even now. A poem to remember, as we recall our own scenes of visual joy.
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