Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight is a narrative poem by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, written in 1867 and set in the 17th century. It was written when she was 16 years old and first published in Detroit Commercial Advertiser. [1] The poem consists of ten stanzas of six lines each, written in catalectic trochaic octameter; the ending of the last verse of each stanza is a variant of the title.
The story involves Bessie, a young woman whose lover, Basil Underwood, has been arrested, thrown in prison by the Puritans and sentenced to die that night when the curfew bell rings. Knowing that Oliver Cromwell will be late in arriving, the young woman begs the old sexton to prevent the ringing of the curfew bell. When he refuses, she climbs to the top of the bell tower and heroically risks her life by manually stopping the bell from ringing. Cromwell hears of her deed and is so moved that he issues a pardon for Underwood.
The material upon which Rose Hartwick Thorpe based her poem is Lydia Sigourney's article "Love and Loyalty", which appeared posthumously in Peterson's Magazine in September 1865. [2] It is likely to have been based on the earlier work "Blanche Heriot. A legend of old Chertsey Church", which was published by Albert Richard Smith in The Wassail-Bowl, Vol. II., in 1843. [3] In Smith's account, the young woman, Blanche Heriot, has a lover known as Neville Audley, and the action takes place in 1471 during the Wars of the Roses in England.
Thorpe wrote her poem in 1867, following the American Civil War, while living in Litchfield, Michigan. She traded the manuscript to a Detroit newspaper in exchange for a subscription. [4]
Thorpe's poem, a favorite of Queen Victoria's, was one of the most popular of the 19th century, but later faded into obscurity. [5] An 8-foot monument in Litchfield, Michigan along State Highway 99 honors the poem and author's connection to that town. [4]
In the 1890s, playwright David Belasco used "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" as an inspiration for his play The Heart of Maryland . As he recalled,
"The picture of that swaying young figure hanging heroically to the clapper of an old church bell lived in my memory for a quarter of a century. When the time came that I needed a play to exploit the love and heroism of a woman I wrote a play around that picture."
A late Victorian English poem from the 1880s, "Chertsey Curfew" by Boyd Montgomerie Ranking, treats the same events. [7]
The poem was set to music in 1895, by Stanley Hawley and published as sheet music by Robert Cooks and Co. [8]
The poem was widely known in the English-speaking world. In her novel Anne of Green Gables (1908), set in Prince Edward Island, author Lucy Maud Montgomery has the character Prissy Andrews recite it.
The character, Mattie Silver, from Ethan Frome (1911), has few life skills but can recite "Curfew shall not ring to-night." [9]
Three silent films were made based on the poem. For two of the films, the title was modified to Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight. No sound version has been made, but later 20th century films referred to this poem.
Jack Warner quoted the poem ironically in the film Scrooge (1951). Katharine Hepburn quoted it at length (for comedic effect) in the film Desk Set (1957). She provides a melodramatic reading while a revolutionary new computer created by Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) prints out the poem in response to a misspelled request for information on Corfu.
An illustrated version of this poem is contained in Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated by James Thurber (1940).
The poem is mentioned by author Antonia White in her autobiography As Once in May. As a child she read it repeatedly until she knew it by heart.
A parody poem Towser shall be Tied Tonight was written by Anonymous. Set in Kansas, it tells the story of two lovers whose tryst is threatened by the eponymous guard dog. [10]
"Invictus" is a short poem by the Victorian era British poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). Henley wrote it in 1875, and in 1888 he published it in his first volume of poems, Book of Verses, in the section titled "Life and Death (Echoes)".
Völuspá is the best known poem of the Poetic Edda. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming end and subsequent rebirth, related to the audience by a völva addressing Odin. It is one of the most important primary sources for the study of Norse mythology. The poem is preserved whole in the Codex Regius and Hauksbók manuscripts while parts of it are quoted in the Prose Edda.
In Norse mythology, Gerðr is a jötunn, goddess, and the wife of the god Freyr. Gerðr is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; and in the poetry of skalds. Gerðr is sometimes modernly anglicized as Gerd or Gerth.
Edith Wharton was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, for her novel, The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, in 1996. Her other well-known works are The House of Mirth, the novella Ethan Frome, and several notable ghost stories.
Barbara Fritchie, also known as Barbara Frietchie, and sometimes spelled Frietschie, was a Unionist during the Civil War. She became part of American folklore in part from a popular poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.
Chertsey is a town in the Borough of Runnymede, Surrey, England, 18 miles (29 km) south-west of central London. It grew up around Chertsey Abbey, founded in AD 666 by St Erkenwald, and gained a market charter from Henry I. A bridge across the River Thames first appeared in the early 15th century. The River Bourne through the town meets the Thames at Weybridge. The Anglican church has a medieval tower and chancel roof. The 18th-century listed buildings include the current stone Chertsey Bridge and Botleys Mansion. A curfew bell, rung at 8 pm on weekdays from Michaelmas to Lady Day ties with the romantic local legend of Blanche Heriot, marked by a statue of her and the bell at Chertsey Bridge. Green areas include the Thames Path National Trail, Chertsey Meads and a round knoll with remains of a prehistoric hill fort known as Eldebury Hill. Pyrcroft House dates from the 18th century and Tara from the late 20th. Train services are run between Chertsey railway station and London Waterloo by South Western Railway. The town is within the M25, accessible via junction 11. It has a population of 15,967. Dave MacLaren (b.1957) currently holds the title of Lord Chertsey since 2024.
The tradition of wassailing falls into two distinct categories: the house-visiting wassail and the orchard-visiting wassail. The house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts; this practice still exists, but has largely been displaced by carol singing. The orchard-visiting wassail refers to the ancient custom of visiting orchards in cider-producing regions of England, reciting incantations and singing to the trees to promote a good harvest for the coming year. Notable traditional wassailing songs include "Here We Come a-Wassailing", "Gloucestershire Wassail", and "Gower Wassail".
The Angelus is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation of Christ. As with many Catholic prayers, the name Angelus is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ. The devotion is practised by reciting as versicle and response three Biblical verses narrating the mystery, alternating with the prayer "Hail Mary". The Angelus exemplifies a species of prayers called the "prayer of the devotee".
Vǫlundarkviða is one of the mythological poems of the Poetic Edda. The title is anglicized in various ways, including Völundarkvitha, Völundarkvidha, Völundarkvida, Volundarkvitha, Volundarkvidha and Volundarkvida.
Guðrúnarkviða I or the First Lay of Guðrún is simply called Guðrúnarkviða in Codex Regius, where it is found together with the other heroic poems of the Poetic Edda. Henry Adams Bellows considered it to be one of the finest of the eddic poems with an "extraordinary emotional intensity and dramatic force". It is only in this poem that Gjúki's sister Gjaflaug and daughter Gollrönd are mentioned, and the only source where Herborg, the queen of the Huns, appears. The Guðrún lays show that the hard-boiled heroic poetry of the Poetic Edda also had a place for the hardships of women.
"Excelsior" is a short poem written in 1841 by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" has been frequently referenced and parodied in contemporary culture. Immediately popular after the poem's publication in 1845, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Some consider it the best poem ever written. As such, modern references to the poem continue to appear in popular culture.
"For the Fallen" is a poem written by Laurence Binyon. It was first published in The Times in September 1914. It was also published in Binyon's book "The Winnowing Fan : Poems On The Great War" by Elkin Mathews, London, 1914.
Rose Hartwick Thorpe was an American poet and writer, remembered largely for the narrative poem, Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight (1867), which gained national popularity. It was translated into nearly every language of the world and was universally recognized as a veritable classic. Other poems followed, among them being "The Station Agent's Story," "Red Cross," and "In a Mining Town." Although a busy and prolific author, she was ill for some years. In 1888, she and her family removed to San Diego, California, living in Rosemere, Pacific Beach. Thorpe gave San Diego's "False Bay" the new moniker "Mission Bay" in a poem published in 1888 in The Golden Era; the name persists today.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Atlamál in grǿnlenzku is one of the heroic poems of the Poetic Edda. It relates the same basic story as Atlakviða at greater length and in a different style. The poem is believed to have been composed in Greenland, most likely in the 12th century. It has 103 stanzas and is the only Eddic poem written entirely in the metre málaháttr.
"Little Orphant Annie" is an 1885 poem written by James Whitcomb Riley and published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. First titled "The Elf Child", the name was changed by Riley to "Little Orphant Allie" at its third printing; however, a typesetting error during printing renamed the poem to its current form. Known as the "Hoosier poet", Riley wrote the rhymes in 19th-century Hoosier dialect. As one of his most well known poems, it served as the inspiration for the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, which itself inspired a Broadway musical, several films, and many radio and television programs.
Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated is a 1940 book by James Thurber. Thurber updates some old fables and creates some new ones of his own. Notably there is 'The Bear Who Could Take It Or Leave It Alone' about a bear who lapses into alcoholism before sobering up and going too far that way. Also an updated version of 'Little Red Riding Hood' which ends with the immortal lines, "even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead. " All the fables have one-line morals. The moral of 'Little Red Riding Hood' is "Young girls are not so easy to fool these days." Another fable concerns a non-materialist chipmunk who likes to arrange nuts in pretty patterns rather than just piling up as many as he can. He is constantly nagged by his chipmunk wife for this.
Blanche Heriot was a legendary heroine from Chertsey, Surrey, whose story was brought to a wider public in two works by the Chertsey-born early Victorian writer Albert Smith.
The Heart of Maryland was a theatrical play written, produced and directed by David Belasco. The four-act melodrama set in the American Civil War opened at the Herald Square Theatre in New York on October 22, 1895 and ran for 240 performances. Mrs. Leslie Carter originated the role of Maryland Calvert and Maurice Barrymore originated the role of Col. Alan Kendrick. William Furst composed the play's incidental music. The play toured throughout the United States for several years, and was made into a silent film by the same title in 1927. Silent versions also appeared in 1915, with Mrs. Carter in her original role, and in 1921.
