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Mystery of a Virginia poem

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At auction this week, I got a box lot with two postcards. One was a linen postcard, unused, celebrating the state of Virginia. The images included a train traveling through a countryside and two covered wagons on a dirt road.

Between these two images was a poem, titled “Virginia,” that began:

“The roses nowhere bloom so white
As in Virginia;

The sunshine nowhere shines so bright
As in Virginia;

The birds sing nowhere quite so sweet
And nowhere hearts so lightly beat.

For Heaven and Earth both seem to meet
Down in Virginia”
     

The sentimental poem showed some writer’s love for his home state, but there was no name attached to it. Curious, I wondered if this was the Virginia state poem. So, I Googled and found that the state does not have a poem. (Neither does my state of Pennsylvania.)

Was it the state song? No, again. Virginia has an emeritus state song, but no official song. The emeritus song is “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” by James Bland, an African American composer of minstrel songs. It had been the official state song from 1940 to 1997.

The lyrics, which romanticize slavery, didn’t sit well with some African Americans in the state, and I can understand that after reading them. Bland was born of free parents in Flushing, NY, in 1854. So could he have been satirizing white Southerner’s nostalgia for the “good old days” when he wrote the lyrics in 1878?

Here’s the first verse:

Carry me back to old Virginny,

There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,

There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go,

There’s where I labor’d so hard for old massa,

Day after day in the field of yellow corn,

No place on earth do I love more sincerely

Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.

Bland wrote the song as he sat on the banks of the James River with a friend he was visiting in Tidewater, VA. In his lifetime, Bland, a self-taught banjo player who attended Howard University, wrote about 700 songs and made his living in black minstrel shows. He also wrote “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” adopted by the Philadelphia Mummers as the unofficial theme song of their parade.

Bland went to London in 1881 and spent 20 years performing there before returning to the United States, broke. He died in Philadelphia – where he had lived for awhile when he was young –  in1911 and is buried here. His grave had been unmarked for years until a group of people found it and erected a marker.

Listen to Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers (1937) sing the song and the Dixieland Crackers play (2008) it. The song actually has a good beat, but those lyrics …

Since I found that the “poem” was not the state song, I kept looking. I found a reference to it in the 1904 Alumni Bulletin of the University of Virginia. In an address, the president at the time said he thought of the three verses after college musicians serenaded him outside his home one night with the song of his home state of North Carolina. He suggested that the poem be put to music for a Virginia state song.

I believe I finally found the author: Harry (or Charles as I also found him listed) Curran Wilbur. According to the book “Memories of Virginia (1907),” the poem was written by the newspaperman for his wife, who was from Virginia. The verses are switched in the book, however: the first verse is the last verse on my postcard. The writer said it was first published in the Wheeling (I assume it’s West Virginia) newspaper in 1903.

I also found the poem on postcards a little different from mine, and even quoted as a condolence after the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007.

If anyone else has information about this poem, please let me know.

You never know where research – and history – will take you. Meanwhile, continue to join me on the ride.

5 Comments

  1. Sally Smith
    Sally Smith

    April 2019 – THANK YOU for this post!
    I just found this poem, hand copied, in the items from my late father-in-law’s home. He hailed from West Virginia and someone (one of his sisters most likely) changed the lyrics to reflect the love they had for their little home in the hills of Pendleton County, WV

    “as in Virginia” was changed to “in West Virginia”.

    “where the James” was changed to “where Stony Run goes rolling by”

    Also, the verse about “when I die” was, fittingly, the final verse in this copy.

    He died early February 2019 at the age of 87; one of the youngest of 12.

    April 6, 2019
    |Reply
  2. Harriet
    Harriet

    Dear Sherry,

    I, too, have a copy of your poem: VIRGINIA. I found it in an old scrapbook of my Great-Aunt Mary, who lived in Remington, VA. It was put in the Remington newspaper by an Insurance agent as part of his business advertisement. Aunt Mary clipped it from the Newspaper and put it in her scrapbook somewhere around 1910 – 1920’s. When I Googled to see if I could find some information about it, I came across your comments. Thanks for your research,

    February 26, 2019
    |Reply
  3. Tricia
    Tricia

    Thank you for your post. I, too, am a native-born Virginian with ancestors going back to the early settlement days. Almost thirty years ago, I came upon a framed, water color painted version of this poem. The words are written in gold in an Old English style upon a scroll and is surrounded by roses. The verses are in printed in the same order as your post card. I always thought the words were very touching and am thrilled to learn of its origin.

    February 11, 2013
    |Reply
  4. Linda Paul
    Linda Paul

    Thank you so much for posting this! I am a native Virginian with my roots going back hundreds of years. My grandmother had a verse of this poem framed hanging over the fireplace of her home for many years. When she passed, my mother kept the framed poem proudly displayed in her home. I’ve always wondered the history behind this beautifully written poem. In Googling a verse from the poem just now, was thrilled to find out the history behind it via your website. Enjoyed reading the poem in it’s entirety and learning the history behind it. Thank you!

    November 13, 2010
    |Reply
    • sherry
      sherry

      Thanks, Linda. It was a joy digging up some history on the poem. When I first came across the postcard, I knew that I wanted to find out who wrote such a delightful poem.

      Sherry

      November 14, 2010
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