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I read the following beautiful and haunting
lines out at my mother’s funeral on
Wednesday
the 7th of May 1997.
Absent
Sometimes, between love's shadows
on the
grass,
The little waves of truant sunlight
pass.
My eyes grow dim with tenderness
the while,
Thinking I see you - thinking
I see you smile.
And sometimes in the twilight
gloom apart,
the tall trees whisper - whisper
heart to
heart,
From my fond lips - the eager
answers fall,
Thinking I hear you - thinking
I hear you
call. |
My mother: Annie Elizabeth Evans was
born
in 1904. The above was one of her favourite
poems. I later discovered that it was
actually
the lyrics of an Edwardian ballad called
‘Absent’ composed in 1899, with the
words
by Catherine Y. Glen, and the music
by J.
W. Metcalf. It was sung on an early
grammophone
record by by Christine Miller.)
 I also found that when in 1914 Paul Sawyier
the American Impressionist (1865-1917)
received
word that Mayme Bull, his longtime
sweetheart,
had passed away from "nervous
prostration."
Sawyier's last visit to Kentucky was
for
Bull's funeral, after which he remained
in
the Frankfort cemetery to paint the
scene
of the gravesite. Under the picture,
in watercolors,
he etched the lyrics to the song, "Absent."
Sawyier never returned to the Commonwealth
after Bull's death. In a description
by his
sister, Mary Campbell, Sawyier had
lost "all
his desire to live" after the
loss.
Etched on Sawyier's painting of Mayme
Bull's
Gravesite:
Paul Sawyier (1865-1917) was born the
son
of a physician in Madison County, Ohio,
but
his family relocated to Frankfort,
Kentucky
when he was young. Paul’s early inclinations
towards art were cultivated by his
parents,
and in 1884 Sawyier enrolled in the
Cincinnati
Art School. Within two years, he opened
a
studio in Cincinnati. In New York,
Sawyier
studied under William Merritt Chase
at the
Art Students League. Sawyier returned
to
Cincinnati and studied under Frank
Duveneck.
He then returned to Frankfort where
local
subjects became his focus, and it was
here
he developed his particular aptitude for watercolor. Between 1908 and 1913, Sawyier
spent several years living on a houseboat
on the Kentucky River painting his
surroundings.
At the 1893 Columbian Exposition Sawyier
and his work achieved a level of popularity,
and he, unlike most of his Kentucky
contemporaries,
embraced Impressionism. Proud of his
status
as a professional artist, Sawyier generally
refused to engage in other pursuits
even
when money was short (which it often
was).
In 1913, Sawyier relocated to Brooklyn,
New
York, living with his widowed sister.
Years
later, he moved to the Catskill Mountains
where he died in 1917.
Paul Sawyier first met Mary "Mayme"
Bull (1865-1914), also of Frankfort
in 1887,.
While the two became engaged, they
never
married (a result of their caring for
their
aging and ailing parents and Sawyier's
constant
financial instability). Little is known
of
their relation because Sawyier's sister
burned
all of the couple's correspondence
upon the
death of her brother.
References: Arthur F. Jones, The Art
of Paul
Sawyier (Lexington, KY: University
of Kentucky
Press, 1976)
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| COMPOSED BY JOHN W. METCALF, WITH WORDS BY
CATHERINE YOUNG GLEN. Absent.
Boston / New
York: The Arthur P. Schmidt Co.
1899. Softcover.
4to ; 6 pages. |
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Evans Experientialism 
