An analysis of the nineteenth-century elegies written by Jacob Painter, who with his brother Minshall planted more than a thousand species of trees and shrubs and made the dream of an arboretum a reality.
Brothers and Friends
Despite being thirteen years apart in age, Minshall and Jacob Painter were not just Quaker brothers but good friends. Minshall (1801-1873) loved farming and the natural sciences and was influential in the community. Jacob (1814-1876) was a writer at heart, a poet who also loved history and science. Together, Minshall and Jacob envisioned transforming parts of a working family farm into an arboretum. Neither married and they both lived out their days on the land inherited from their father, Enos Painter. On it they cultivated hundreds of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. They built a library and a greenhouse. For eighteen years, they lived together at Lachford Hall, the original section of which was built by their carpenter great grandfather, Thomas Minshall II.
While Minshall kept comprehensive notes about local flora, fauna, and weather, Jacob pursued his love of language through poetry. In sweeping cursive, he wrote poems about the four seasons, birds, streams, and trees. He wrote elegies — reflective, commemorative poems — for lost loved ones, including a touching elegy for Minshall that appears on his tomb in nearby Cumberland Cemetery. Interestingly, Jacob also wrote his own elegy before his death. The drafts of these elegies, preserved in the Painter Family archives housed in the Swarthmore College Library, reveal Jacob to be a devoted student of language.
Jacob and Minshall Painter in their arboretum.
Him Who Knew Thee Best
Minshall Painter died in 1873, three years before Jacob. Jacob had been honing his craft as a poet for some time, and the drafts of the elegy he wrote for Minshall show this in detail. The lines are written in iambic tetrameter, with lines containing eight syllables and four iambic feet. The final version of the elegy that appears on Minshall’s tomb reads:
My brother ‘round thy place of rest
Well may thy once loved flowers entwine,
No heart that throbbed in mortal breast
Was kinder or more true than thine.
For thee no more shall vernal spring
Renew the leaves on trees and bowers;
For thee no more shall Flora bring
Her choicest gifts of rarest flowers.
‘Tis sweet for him who knew thee best,
To cherish thoughts of thee that keep
Thy mem’ry fresh. With hope of rest,
Near by thee in unending sleep.
Jacob’s drafts contain small changes to stanza two, but he seemed to wrestle significantly – working through at least eight drafts – with stanza three. Notably, stanza three is where Jacob himself enters the poem (“him who knew thee best”) and where he evokes his love for his brother most directly. Through seven drafts of the final stanza he uses the rhymes best/rest and past/last before making a breakthrough in draft eight. He let go of the rhymed words that were not serving the poem (past/last) and embraced new words that allowed him to finish the poem (keep/sleep). Jacob’s eight drafts of the final stanza appear below, including the lines he struck through:
Draft 1
Tis sweet for him who knew thee best
To cherish/treasure mem’ries of the past
And in that calm eternal rest
With/Near thee he hopes to lie at last
Draft 2
Tis sweet for him who knew thee best
To treasure mem’ries of the past
He hopes for quiet peace at last
He hopes to find a/his place at last
Draft 3
Tis sweet for him who knew thee best
To cherish mem’ries of the past
And near thee in eternal rest
He hopes for quiet peace at last
Draft 4
And in that calm eternal rest
He hopes to live with thee at last
Near thee he hopes to lie at last
Draft 5
Tis sweet for him who knew thee best
To cherish mem’ries of the past
And in that calm eternal rest
Near thee he hopes to lie at last
Draft 6
And near thee in eternal rest
He hopes to find a place at last
Draft 7
Tis sweet to him that knew thee best
To treasure mem’ries of the past
And near thee in thy place of rest
He hopes to find repose at last
Draft 8
Tis sweet to him that knew thee best
To cherish thoughts of thee that keep
Thy mem’ry fresh with hope of rest
Nearby thee in unending sleep
The rhymes are more distinctive in draft eight. In the initial versions, all the final words ended in -st (best, past, rest, last). In the final version, the -eep sound (keep, sleep) is novel and more sonically interesting.
This change also shows that Jacob’s thoughts of Minshall keep his memory vivid and alive; in previous versions, the memories are treasured, but they remain in the past. The earlier versions end with a focus on Jacob (“He hopes for quiet peace at last” “He hopes to find a place at last”). In the final version, Jacob elegantly removes himself from the last lines and places the emphasis on being close to Minshall (“Near by thee in unending sleep”).
Earlier drafts frame time as “eternal rest.” But the new ending of the poem, the ending of brotherhood and friendship, is now an “unending.” Beyond the changing seasons, it will be time outside of time they will inhabit together.
Elegy, With Trees
At some point before his death, Jacob Painter penned his own elegy and sketched trees and plants around the words. Like the sun, the stanzas move from east to west on his tomb:
When he who lies beneath this tomb
Felt life’s warm currents through him flow
He was the sport of hope and gloom
Of joys that come and go.
Where truth and nature seemed to lead
That path in hope and faith he trod
From nature’s laws he drew his creed
As taught by nature’s God.
If for his kind some good he wrought,
Perchance relieved another’s pain
If he one useful moral taught
He has not lived in vain.
If graceless deeds have marred his fame
Made sad his life that else was fair,
He sins no more, withhold thy blame,
In charity forbear.
Jacob Painter’s self-composed elegy.
An earlier draft of stanza two shows that Jacob made several skillful changes before the final version. “Made sad his life that else was fair” was expressed in the earlier draft as “Imbittered [sic] life that else was fair.” The three-syllabled “imbittered” is an anomaly in the larger poem and could make the tetrameter a bit forced. The change to “made sad” is in keeping with the established syllabic pattern and strikes a different emotional note than evoking bitterness at the end of life. Another meaningful change occurs in the penultimate line. “He sins no more, withhold thy blame,” appears in the earlier draft as “He sins no more– then cease thy blame–.” While “then cease thy blame” could be read as overly direct and didactic, “withhold thy blame” is gentler and more fitting with the humble tone of the stanza.
By the Silver Stream
Finally, through Jacob’s lifelong devotion to poetry, the excerpt below serves as an ongoing invitation to visitors to the arboretum he and Minshall envisioned two hundred years ago. Their legacy, and Jacob’s words, are kept alive every time a family meanders beside Rocky Run, or a hiker climbs Pink Hill, or a gardener catches the sun setting behind the stone barn.
“I’ll meet thee by the silver stream
When evening spreads her somber shrouds
Yet while a tint of roseate gleam
Still lingers on the western clouds
And all is hushed on vale or hill
As every nature seems at ease
Save the low murmurs of the rill
Or the soft passing of the breeze.”
