William James Lampton ("Will J. Lampton"), founder of the "Yawp School of Poetry," was born in Lawrence county, Ohio, May 27, 185-, within sight of the Kentucky line. (Being a bachelor, like Henry Cleveland Wood, he has hitherto declined to herald the exact date of his birth.) His parents were Kentuckians and at the age of three years he was brought to this State. His boyhood and youth was spent in the hills of Kentucky. He was fitted at private schools in Ashland and Catletsburg, Kentucky, for Ohio Wesleyan University, which he left for Marietta College. In 1877 Mr. Lampton established the Weekly Review—spelled either way!—at Ashland, Kentucky. Although he had had no prior training in journalism, he wrote eleven columns for his first issue. His was a Republican sheet, and the good Democrats of Boyd county saw to it that it survived not longer than a year. From Ashland Mr. Lampton went to Cincinnati and joined the staff of The Times. The Times was too rapid for him, however, and from Cincinnati he journeyed to Steubenville, Ohio, to take a position on The Herald. Mr. Lampton remained on that paper for three years, when he again came to Kentucky to join the staff of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some time later his paper sent him to Cincinnati, which marked his retirement from Kentucky journalism. It will thus be seen that he "lapsed out of Kentucky for a time, and lapsed again at the close of 1882." Leaving Cincinnati he went to Washington and originated the now well-known department of "Shooting Stars" for The Evening Star. For some years past he has resided in New York, working as a "free-lance." For a long time he contributed a poem almost every day to The Sun, The World, or some other paper. In 1910 the governor of Kentucky created the poet a real Kentucky colonel; and this momentous elevation above earth's common mortals is heralded to-day upon his stationery. Colonel Lampton, then, has published six books, the editions of three of which are exhausted, and he is now happy to think that his works are "rare, exceedingly scarce." The first of them, Mrs. Brown's Opinions (New York, 1886), was followed by his chief volume hitherto, Yawps and Other Things (Philadelphia, 1900). The "other things" were poems, not yawps. Colonel Henry Watterson contributed a clever introduction to the attractive volume; and another form of verse was born and clothed. The Confessions of a Husband (New York, 1903), was a slight offset to Mary Adams's The Confessions of a Wife. Colonel Lampton's other books are: The Trolley Car and the Lady (Boston, 1908), being "a trolley trip from Manhattan to Maine;" Jedge Waxem's Pocket-Book of Politics (New York, 1908), which was "owned by Jedge Wabash Q. Waxem, Member of Congress from Wayback," bound in the form of an actual pocket-book; and his latest collection of cleverness, Tame Animals I Have Known (New York, 1912). The tall—and bald!—Kentuckian lives at the French Y. M. C. A., New York, in order, as he himself has said, "to give a Parisian tinge to his religion." His "den" is a delight to Bohemians, a replica of many a country newspaper office in Kentucky. He is one of the joys of life surely. And though he has turned out almost as much as Miss Braddon, he can recall but the four lines he wrote in 1900 upon Mr. James Lane Allen:
"The Reign of Law"—
Well, Allen, you're lucky;
It's the first time it ever
Rained law in Kentucky.
Bibliography. The Bookman (September, 1900); The Bookman (May, 1902); Cosmopolitan Magazine (November, 1907); Lippincott's Magazine (August, 1911).
THESE DAYS[21]
[From Pearson's Magazine (April, 1907)]
Pray,
What is it to-day
That it should be worse than the early days?
Are the modern ways
Darker for all the light
That the years have shed?
Is the right
Dead—
Under the wheels of progress
By the side of the road to success,
Bleeding and bruised and broken,
Left in forgetfulness?
Is truth
Stronger in youth
Than in age? Does it grow
Feeble with years, and move slow
On the path that leads
To the world's needs?
Does man reach up or down
To take the victor's crown
Of progress in science, art and commerce?
In all the works that plan
And purpose to accomplish
The betterment of man?
Does the soul narrow
With the broadening of thought?
Does the heart harden
By what the hand has wrought?
Who shall say
That decay
Marks the good of to-day?
Who dares to state
That God grows less as man grows great?
OUR CASTLES IN THE AIR[22]
[From Pearson's Magazine (September, 1908)]
I builded a castle in the air,
A magical, beautiful pile,
As the wonderful temples of Karnak were,
By the thirsty shores of the Nile.
Its glittering towers emblazoned the blue,
Its walls were of burnished gold,
Which up from the caverns of ocean grew,
Where pearls lay asleep in the cold.
Its windows were gems with the glint and the gleam
Of the sun and the moon and the stars.
Like the eyes of a god in a Brahmin's dream
Of the land of the deodars.
It stood as the work of a master, alone,
Whose marvelous genius had played
The music of heaven in mortar and stone
With the tools of his earthly trade.
I builded a castle in the air,
From its base to its turret crown;
I stretched forth my hand to touch it there
And the whole darn thing fell down.
CHAMPAGNE
[From The Bohemian]
Gee whiz,
Fizz,
You shine in our eyes
Like the stars in the skies;
You glint and gleam
Like a jeweled dream;
You sparkle and dance
Like the soul of France,
Your bubbles murmur
And your deeps are gold,
Warm is your spirit,
And your body, cold;
You dazzle the senses,
Dispelling the dark;
You are music and magic,
The song of the lark;
O'er all the ills of life victorious,
You touch the night and make it glorious.
But, say,
The next day?
Oh, go away!
Go away
And stay!
Gee whiz,
Fizz! ! !
