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…WINTER, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Work Without Hope”
In the midst of winter, it may help revive the spirit to look ahead to the prospect of spring. A newly-added author to Log College Press — Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825-1908) — was a Presbyterian author who had a special fondness for the flora of her adopted state, North Carolina. Her poetry and her paintings reflect the sense of the Creator who adorned his creation with such beauty. The Carolina lily pictured below later became the official state wildflower of North Carolina.
Carolina lily by Cornelia Phillips Spencer (photo by Ken Moore).
Spencer was known as “The Woman Who Rang the Bell,” because after the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was closed during the Reconstruction period following the War Between the States, from 1870 to 1875, she sent numerous letters to the state legislature beseeching them to reopen that institution of higher learning. Finally, on her 50th birthday, she received word that they had granted her request. In jubilation, she rang the campus bell, and composed a hymn of praise for the occasion. Spencer Hall on the Carolina campus is named in her honor.
As anyone who has lived in Chapel Hill in the springtime and beheld the dogwoods blooming, and more, can testify, the flowers of North Carolina are a special sight. In her 1866 volume on The Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina, she included these verses, reflective of her appreciation of the setting of a memorial which took place in the month of April.
Come, Southern flowers, and twine above their grave;
Let all our rath spring blossoms bear a part;
Let lilies of the vale and snowdrops wave.
And come thou too, fit emblem, bleeding-heart!Bring all our evergreens — the laurel and the bay.
From the deep forests which around us stand;
They know them well, for in a happier day
They roamed these hills and valleys hand in hand.Ye winds of heaven, o'er them gently sigh.
And April showers fall in kindliest rain,
And let the golden sunbeams softly lie
Upon the sod for which they died in vain.
A bouquet including Goldenrod and Christmas fern by Cornelia Phillips Spencer (photo by Ken Moore).
Spencer’s botanical appreciation for the beauty of nature around her was reflective of her love for the God who made the flora and fauna, and the art forms she chose to express that appreciation were reflective of the Artist who brings all to new life again in the spring. During the winter months, let us remember God’s faithfulness to bring vivid colors once again to grey landscapes. The land will rejoice, and flowers shall blossom again, to the praise of God (Isa. 35:1).
