Wyatt Scrapbook - To Pallas Athene

In November 2011, I purchased a scrapbook at an antiques mall in Carson, California. The scrapbook is believed to have belonged to Laurine Wyatt. I am transcribing the articles and documents contained in the scrapbook with the hope that it may be of value to genealogists who may be researching the individuals named.

Why did Laurine paste this newspaper clipping of a poem in her scrapbook? Did she know the author or just like her poetry?

“TO PALLAS ATHENE

Pallas, thou art avenged!

The shattering legions have long since been dust

Who bruised thy city's face with iron heel,

Their glory faded and their borrowed culture stript

Of all its hollow trappings, leaving none

To worship them who once had ruled a world.

Rome vulgar in her riches, gorged with power,

Lies now in sullen sleep, forever dead;

While but this day I saw thee smile again

In pristine beauty as a risen sun.

Goddess of Poets, Whose vivid words

Limned in undying marble sing of thee,

Thyself, alone, can pierce the stifling dust

That chokes the roofless halls of hoary time!

Strange centuries, and races yet unborn

Shall rise to preen themselves and flutter down,

Like feeble moths aspiring to the flame,

Lost in a moment's flare, and swift to pass

Before thy timeless face.

For where men gather, in whatever shrine,

To worship Beauty as a living thing—

There must Athene's temple rise again

            A Symphony in Stone.

—MARGARET NORMAN BRYANT,

2515 West Linden Avenue,

Nashville, Tenn.”

Notes:

1. Margaret Bryant, the author of the poem, is enumerated in the 1930 U.S. federal census at the address above in Davidson County, Tennessee; the enumerator recorded that she was 34 years old and born in Tennessee. She is enumerated with her husband, Lawrence (age 42, born in Kentucky, an accountant at a tobacco company), and two sons, Norman (age 14) and Lawrence, Jr. (age 10), both born in Tennessee. [Source: 1930 U.S. census, Davidson County, Tennessee, population schedule, Nashville, Enumeration District (ED) 19-195, Sheet 15-A, dwelling 224, family 241, household of Lawrence Bryant; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : access 8 February 2012); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication T626, roll 2242.]
2. The newspaper in which published and date of publication are unknown.
3. The relationship of Laurine Wyatt to Margaret Norman Bryant and her family is unknown.

© 2012 Denise Spurlock, Ancestral Trees Research