Lysander's Hope

Under various titles, these popular lines on "Hope" circulated pretty widely in magazines and newspapers during the late 18th century and early 19th century. Online, Mary S. Van Deusen indexes "Hope" with pieces that might have been written by her ancestor Henry Livingston, Jr. However, "Hope" had been uplifting readers in New England and the South for decades before before the poem appeared over the signature "R." in the December 13, 1817 issue of the New York Weekly Visitor and Ladies Museum. As supplied by "R." (probably not the genial farmer-poet of Poughkeepsie, then 69), the 1817 Weekly Visitor version lacks two stanzas of the usual six, and gives "cruel shock" in the last, instead of "cruel stroke." The earliest version I have located so far appeared in the March 1791 issue of the Massachusetts Magazine, contributed (and composed?) "At the request of a Lady" by "LYSANDER."

For the MASSACHUSETTS MAGAZINE.

HOPE.

At the request of a Lady. 

AMID the varying scenes of life,
Where silent care and noisy strife,
     The shifting drama fill,
In this dark valley drown'd in tears,
Augmented by increasing years,
     Hope lights her taper still.

Altho the soul ride on the waves,
Where danger swims and terror laves,
     To fright the goddess, joy;
To save her from the rock, despair,
Hope is her steady anchor there,
     Credulity the buoy.

What though a deluge sink the ground,
Nought but the sea be seen around,
     And nought but heav'n above?
Like Noah, on the tide of grief,
The mind soon finds a sweet relief,
     From hope, her herald dove.

Should angry storm, or black'ning cloud,
In darkness our horizon shroud,
     To cheat us of the light;
Hope, ever active, ever nigh,
Lifts the black bonnet from the sky,
     And drives away the night.

If adverse winds, or eastern gale,
Wide o'er the field of pleasure sail,
     Its blossoms gay deface;
Hope eager flies and turns the vane,
Mild zephyrs breathe, the flow'rs again
     Appear with native grace.

Thus when the box of mis'ries broke,
Fair hope surviv'd the cruel stroke,
     Catholicon most sure;
For all the plagues that reach the mind,
And all the pains that vex mankind,
     Herself a ready cure.

LYSANDER. 

Citation: LYSANDER. “HOPE.” Massachusetts Magazine, or, Monthly Museum of Knowledge & Rational Entertainment, vol. 3, no. 3, Mar. 1791, p. 185. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eup&AN=35909301&site=ehost-live.

Titled "Stanzas on Hope," the poem appeared again over the initials "A. L." in the May 1793 number of the Massachusetts Magazine.

Reprinted in the Halifax, North Carolina Journal on January 26, 1795:

Halifax North-Carolina Journal - January 26, 1795

Also reprinted in the February 24, 1798 issue of The Key (Frederick Town, Maryland):

“HOPE.” Key, vol. 1, no. 7, Feb. 1798, p. 55. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cps&AN=36678628&site=ehost-live.

And in the Peachem, Vermont Green Mountain Patriot on November 2, 1798:

Fri, Nov 2, 1798 – 4 · Green Mountain Patriot (Peacham, Vermont) · Newspapers.com

"Hope" also graces the Amherst, New Hampshire Village, December 1, 1798; Northampton, Massachusetts Gazette, October 15, 1800; and the Boston Intelligencer on January 27, 1816. Reprinted "from the Boston Evening Gazette" in the Norfolk, Virginia American Beacon on September 17, 1817.

Background:

• Bertha-Monica Stearns, Early New York Magazines for Ladies, New York History Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 1933) pages 32-41.
• Lyon Norman Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines, 1741-1789 (New York,  1931; reprinted Octagon Books, 1966).
• Jared Gardner, The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2012).

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