Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/845

Rh blacksmithing, herding cattle and sheep, and earned his way through the public schools at Suisun, California, San Jose normal school and Santa Rosa college. His boyhood poems were published in California papers.

We claim him for Oregon City and Oregon. His best known poem is "The Man with the Hoe." The following lines, entitled "The Menace of the Tower," is appropriate to the times:

Samuel L. Simpson is the Poet Laureate of Oregon. He is emphatically an Oregon production. He was born in Missouri and came to Oregon with his parents in 1846, and was educated at the Willamette university. Studied law but took to literature and newspaper work in preference. His poems are fugitive pieces rather than serious study. And the force and beauty of them establish a claim to great talent as a poet. His works have recently, fifteen or more years after his death, been gathered up by a sister and published in an elegant volume. His best known poem is entitled "Ad Willametam," an apostrophe to the river he loved so well. We print the whole poem.

From the Cascade's frozen gorges.

Leaping like a child at play.

Winding, widening through the Valley,

Bright Willamette glides away.