  Will Wallace Harney, poet, was born at Bloomington, Indiana, June 20, 1832, the son of John H. Harney, professor of mathematics in the University of Indiana, and author of the first Algebra edited by an American. When the future poet was seven years of age his father removed to Louisville, Kentucky, to accept the presidency of Louisville College. In 1844 President Harney became editor of the Louisville Daily Democrat, which he conducted for nearly twenty-five years. Will Wallace Harney was educated by the old grammarian, Noble Butler, and at Louisville College. He became a teacher in the public schools of the city, in which he taught for five years; and he was the first principal of the high school there, holding the position for two years. Know-Nothingism then swept the city and elected a new board of trustees, which requested Harney's resignation. He was appointed to a professorship in the State Normal School at Lexington, which he held for two years. He then returned to Louisville to practice law, but he was shortly afterwards asked to become assistant editor of the Daily Democrat; and after his father's death, in 1867, he became editor of that paper. Harney's masterpiece, The Stab, that John J. Piatt called "a tragic little night-piece which Heine could not have surpassed in its simple, graphic narration and vivid suggestiveness," was written in Kentucky before 1860. In 1869 Harney removed to Florida, where he planted an orange grove and wrote for the high-class magazines and newspapers of the East and South. From 1883 to 1885 he was editor of The Bitter Sweet, a newspaper of Kissimmee. Harney spent the final years of his life with his only son, William R. Harney, a business man of Jacksonville, to whom he inscribed his one book, The Spirit of the South (Boston, 1909). This volume
THE STAB [From The Spirit of the South (Boston, 1909)] On the road, the lonely road, Under the cold white moon, Under the ragged trees, he strode; He whistled, and shifted his heavy load; Whistled a foolish tune. There was a step timed with his own; A figure that stooped and bowed; A cold white blade that flashed and shone, Like a splinter of daylight downward thrown— And the moon went behind a cloud. But the moon came out, so broad and good, The barn cock woke and crowed; Then roughed his feathers in drowsy mood, And the brown owl called to his mate in the wood, That a dead man lay on the road. |
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