EDWARD

See also:

• ROWLAND, HENRY AUGUSTUS (1848-1901)

ROWLAND

See also:

• SILL
• SILL (O.Eng. syl, Mid. E. sylle, selle; the word appears in Icel. syll, svill, Swed. syll, and Dan. syld, and in German, as Schwelle; Skeat refers to the Teutonic root swal-, swell, the word meaning the rise or swell formed by a beam at a threshold; the L
• EDWARD ROWLAND SILL (1841-1887)

SILL (1841-1887)  , American poet and educationist, was born at Windsor, Connecticut, on the 29th of April 1841 . He graduated at Yale in 1861, as class poet; engaged in business in California; entered the Harvard Divinity School in 1867, but soon left it for a position on the staff of the New York Evening Mail; and after teaching at Wadsworth and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (1868-1871), became principal of the Oak-land High School, California . He was professor of English literature at the university of California in 1894-1882 . His health was failing, and he returned to Cuyahoga Falls in 1883 . He devoted himself to literary work, abundant and largely anonymous, until his death in Cleveland, Ohio, on the 27th of February 1887 . Much of his poetry was contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, the Century Magazine, and the Overland Monthly . Many of his graceful prose essays appeared in " The Contributors' Club," and others appeared in the main body of the Atlantic . Among his works are a translation of Rau's Mozart (1868); The Hermitage and Other Poems (1868); The Venus of Milo and Other Poems (1883), a farewell tribute to his California friends; Poems (1887); The Hermitage and Later Poems (1889); Hermione and Other Poems (1900); The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill (1900) ; Poems (1902) . He was a modest and charming man, a graceful essayist, a sure critic . His contribution to American poetry is small but of fine quality . His best poems, such as The Venus of Milo, The Fool's Prayer and Opportunity, gave him a high place among the minor poets of America, which might have been higher but for his early death . See A Memorial volume privately printed by his friends in 1887; and " Biographical Sketch " in The Poetical Works of Edward Rowland Sill (Boston, 1906), edit; d by William Belmont Parker with Mrs Sill's assistance .