The great sculptural works of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition have been memorialized in photographs, paintings, and prose. Poetry, too, honors some of the famous sculptures from the Fair.
Horace Spencer Fiske (1859–1940) taught English at Beloit College and Wisconsin State Normal School before a long career on the faculty and administration of the University of Chicago beginning in 1894. He stablished the John Billings Fiske Prize in Poetry (in honor of his father) for University students in 1919 and authored several books of poetry and prose. His collection The Ballad of Manila Bay and Other Verses (University of Chicago Press, 1900) includes two poems about sculptures by Daniel Chester French at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
Lorado Taft’s plaster Bust of Horace Spencer Fiske c. 1895, in the collection of the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The first poem celebrates the Columbus Quadriga, also called The Triumph of Columbia, designed in collaboration with Edward C. Potter and which surmounted the Peristyle. The second honors French’s iconic The Statue of the Republic, the largest sculpture ever constructed in the United States at the time. This poem alludes to the Peristyle fire of January 8, 1894, which destroyed much of the east end of the Grand Basin but left the “Golden Lady” unscathed … for a while longer. (For more about this and other fires, see “Death of the Republic: The fiery end to the golden colossus of the 1893 World’s Fair”.)
Model of the Columbus Quadriga by Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter. [Image from The Graphic History of the Fair (Graphic Co., 1894).]
THE COLUMBIAN QUADRIGA
By Daniel Chester French
O stateliest glory of the Peristyle,
…..Quadriga of the victor! Bearer bold
…..Of him whose eye prophetic saw unfold
A world of beauty, brilliant with the smile
Of the Creator. “Bear him yet awhile,”
…..The nations cried departing — New and Old
…..Uniting in a gratitude untold
To him whose purpose nothing could beguile.
…..But from the murmurous song of inland sea,
The sculptured whiteness of fair Honor’s court,
…..And the Republic’s presence calm and free,
Thou didst upbear him to a star-lit port.
…..Upon a flame-cloud like a seer of eld, —
…..And all the people sighed as they beheld.
Daniel Chester French’s Statue of the Republic became an icon of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. [Image from Picturesque World’s Fair. W.B. Conkey, 1894.]
THE STATUE OF THE REPUBLIC
By Daniel Chester French
Engirt with dreamful beauty thou didst stand,
…..By day and night illumined, and thy feet
…..The gathered nations thronged with homage sweet—
The world’s hope shining in thine outstretched hand.
The nations left thee there upon the strand
…..To isolation splendid and complete;
…..The flames rose round thee with their withering heat
And touched thy flashing beauty to a brand.
Yet still unscathed thy spirit could not die,—
…..And o’er the land thy rising genius leads,
And summons all to freedom and the sky;
…..Like thine own eagle that no respite needs.
But sunward mounts with ever clearer eye,
…..Thou dost persuade to high and higher deeds.