Thou bright spot on earth

Mary Austin Holley didn’t want to come to Kentucky in 1818 and she wasn’t overjoyed to stay in Kentucky. In fact, on one occasion, when she went back to Boston for a visit without her husband, she tried to leverage him back by somehow “missing” her accommodations home. Yet when the Holleys left Lexington in 1827, she was sorry to leave. Leaving behind her only daughter and her new-born grandson might have had some influence.

Another reason may have been that the Holleys were pretty much forced out of Transylvania. The religious conservatives who had always found Holley’s administration way too liberal had won the statehouse in the person of Joseph Desha. Had Holley stayed, Transylvania may have rivaled Harvard and Yale.

At any rate, Mary Holley wrote the following poem on the occasion of her leaving. It was widely reprinted and was distributed as a broadsheet, her best-known work. Text is from Rebecca Smith Lee’s Mary Austin Holley: A Biography (Univ Texas Press, 1962)

On Leaving Kentucky

Farewell to the land at whose call I deserted
A dearly loved home and the place of my birth!
In sorrow I met thee, with eyes half averted;
In sorrow I quit thee, thou bright spot on earth!

With the wide world to rove in as in life’s early day,
But with spirits less buoyant as chastened by time,
Reflecting in sadness I tread the lone way,
As homeless I leave thee, thou beautiful clime.

Shrubes and trees, which I’ve planted and nurtured with care,
Geraniums, roses, and myrtles, adieu!
Who your first fruits and flowers hereafter will share,
and who will e’er show such devotion to you?

To the church too farewell, where with weekly devotion
My heart and my voice in full unison were
With the organ’s deep tones as with lively emotion
I joined in the concert of praise and of prayer.

But how to the friends who have cherished me ever
Shall I utter the word, or but think we must part!
Let Destiny rule as she chooses, O never
Shall their sacred remembrance be torn from my heart!

May they too forget not they once loved the stranger,
Whatever her mood was, grave, gay, or serene;
Though a pilgrim henceforth, in far countries a ranger,
She will still love to dwell on the days that have been.

— Mary Austin Holley

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