AUTHOR: Anderson, Martha Jane
PUBLICATION: Mount Lebanon Cedar Boughs: Original Poems by the North Family of Shakers. Buffalo : Peter Paul Book Co., 1895. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011208694

 

Note that not all of the poems listed below are by Anderson but represent the context in which her work appears.

RELATED TITLES:
Evans, Frederick. Religious Communism

---. Shakers, Who They Are and What They Believe

These poems, by members of the North Family of Shakers to which Anderson belonged, forge a relation among veg*nism, support for animal rights, and other social reform movements: abolition, women’s rights, dress reform. Anti-slavery poems include “The Slaves of Poverty,” “America’s Working People,” “Stars that Twinkle,” and “Reply of the Stars.” “The Factory” is an exhortation against the monotony, dullness, and unhealthy conditions of factory life for those who work there: “But as the law of justice stands / Air, and water, and fertile lands, / Should be given into the hands / Of people in every clime; …” (101). Parallels between nature and humanity are forged in “No Time to Lose: For the Children.” Numerous poems celebrate the earth, nature, streams, flowers, birds, and the seasons. Among poems that celebrate birds are those like “The Crow’s Lecture” and “The Bird Craze” that feature birds speaking in direct discourse, and “The Wood Thrush”: “Ah, man has been your enemy to plunder / Your precious life, / Nor seems to hear the notes that break in wonder / Upon earth’s strife” (113).

“The Bird Craze” by Martha J. Anderson engages the Victorian controversy over the use of taxidermied birds to decorate women's hats. The decimation of bird populations to supply this fashion informs Anderson's poem, which uses direct speech to dramatize the plight of songbirds. A woman puts on a hat that “She knew that her friends would admiringly start” which is adorned by three (dead) songbirds (63). The hat is described as being especially charming and stylish: “A bonnet more charming could never be found / Though all the beau monde she should visit” (64). Charmed by her own appearance, the woman is “transported, delighted and thrilled” to the forests where the birds live: “But lo! fatal day, a behest to fulfill, / The huntsmen, with powder and ration / Came fully prepared the dear minstrels to kill, / To meet the demands of Dame Fashion” (64). She is shocked and despairs over this vision and the birds appear to speak to her: “‘O indolent daughter of pleasure! / The pain that we suffer you must surely feel, / For justice will mete her full measure’” (64). The birds claim that this destruction of innocent life will be met with a “full compensation” by God. The lady vows that “The forfeit of life shall ne’er yield me bliss, / May it never, O, never be broken! / My sisters, who thoughtlessly yield to caprice, / Let us live for some nobler endeavor, / And weave for our brows the fair laurels of peace, / And banish the bird-craze forever” (65).

“A Plea for the Turkeys” by C. C. Venneo begins with an exhortation to meat-eaters. In the opening two stanzas, the speaker watches the turkeys grow up. Then, the speaker “felt a sudden fear, / And pity smote me as I mourned their fate” (65), anticipating their slaughter “Where men raised blood-stained hands and killed for taste” (66). The speaker characterizes women as “dissector[s]”  and laments, “Oh pitiless! we send the Holy Book / and missionaries where the heathen roam, / But in our folly blindly overlook / The unconverted heathen here at home” (66).

“The Crow’s Lecture: For the Children” by C. De Vere relates the proceedings of a “convention of crows,” during which one crow “spoke of the hardships they had to pass through, / Of strings, traps and guns out of sight, / And then such a picture of Scare-Crows she drew / That they all screamed aloud with affright” (173). The poetic speaker relates this terrorizing of the crows to the biblical authorization of human dominion over all creatures: “E’er Adam in Eden departed from law, / His soul had knowledge of all that he saw; / And when for renewal each bird and beast came, / Divining its nature, he gave it a name. / But man the usurper, remorseless, and severe, / What black sins have filled up his lengthened career; / God’s most gentle creatures now timid and wild / Instinctively shrink from the steps of a child. / Each brave, noble beast is ferocious and shy, / Yet man with his cruelty these can outvie” (174). Awakening from the dream, the speaker realizes that they had given speech to the bird calls, but nevertheless, they feel pity when they see a crow caught in a storm while they’re safely inside, reflecting that “...when with mankind we live in true peace, / The terror of us will in wild creatures cease” (175).

In “The Bird Legislator,” L. S. Bowers uses animal allegory to explore issues related to women's rights. The speaker believes that birds live in a state of constant happiness until one day they witness “what seemed like a selfish thought / In a tiny bird brain well outwrought” (177). One male bird sat “too long” and “At the same time watching with calm content / The frail lady bird as she came and went / Carrying straws three times her length / But the stronger bird conserved his strength” (178). The granting of rights by the male to the female might represent superficial equality but is in fact exploitative: “Although much engaged in the ‘suffrage cause’ / He still thought it better to make up the laws, / To call in all parties, the martin and crow, / Robin and sparrow – all men folks you know” (178).