Student poem composed by Jacob Abbot Cummings, 1799 September 16

Handwritten poem composed by Jacob Abbot Cummings when he was an undergraduate at Harvard College. The rhyming poem celebrates morning (as a metaphor for life) and describes the farmer, industrious milk maid, and market man. It begins, “Loud speaks the clarion of approaching day..." The poem is labeled "16 September 1799 Cummings" and is headed with a quote from John Milton's Paradise Lost: "Sweet in the breath of morn, her rising sweet, with song of earliest bird."

Title supplied by cataloger. The poem was received from the library of Professor Charles Eliot Norton on January 19, 1923.

Jacob Abbot Cummings (1772-1820), a Boston teacher and textbook author and publisher, was born on November 2, 1772 in New Hampshire. He received an AB from Harvard in 1801 and an AM in 1804. Cummings was a school teacher, school textbook author, and a partner in the Boston publishing house Cumming and Hilliard. Cummings died on February 24, 1820.