Is there a more faded figure in American literature than Bret Harte (1836–1902)? Well, yes, dozens. (Where have you gone, Carson McCullers? The Southern Gothic turns its lonely eyes to you.) But in the old schemas in which we used to teach Americana, Bret Harte was often mentioned near — albeit trailing — Mark Twain as a writer of the American scene, especially about life off the East Coast. His name would appear prominently as well in literature textbooks’ chapters on the Local Colorists, of whom only Sarah Orne Jewett seems not to have been washed under by the sad tides of time and literary fashion. Still, such stories as Harte’s 1869 “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and 1868 “The Luck of Roaring Camp” remain small classics, while his satirical poem “Plain Language from Truthful James” was once widely taken as a standard of California comedy. Here, in “Coyote,” he uses tetrameter quatrains, each ending with the same rhyme, to describe a coyote as “A four-footed friar in orders of gray.”Coyoteby Bret HarteA shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall,Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall,Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alwayA thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray.Here, Carlo, old fellow, he’s one of your kind,Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind.What! snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs mayDeny their own kin in the outcast in gray.Well, take what you will, though it be on the sly,Marauding or begging, I shall not ask why,But will call it a dole, just to help on his wayA four-footed friar in orders of gray!___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by the Sun’s poetry editor, Joseph Bottum of Dakota State University, with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, The Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
