James Gates Percival was an American poet and geologist, born in Berlin, Connecticut

Berlin, Connecticut

Berlin is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 19,866 at the 2010 census. It was incorporated in 1785. The geographic center of Connecticut is located in the town. Berlin is residential and industrial, and served by the Amtrak station of the same name...

 and died in Hazel Green, Wisconsin

Hazel Green, Wisconsin

Hazel Green is a village in Grant and Lafayette Counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 1,183 at the 2000 census. The village is located mostly within the Town of Hazel Green in Grant County; only a small portion extends into the Town of Benton in Lafayette...

.

Biography

He was a precocious child, and a morbid and impractical, though versatile man, with a facility in writing verse on all manner of subjects and in nearly every known meter

Meter (poetry)

In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

. His sentimentalism appealed to a wide circle, but his was one of the tapers which were extinguished by James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets...

. He had also a reputation as a geologist. He entered Yale College at the age of 16, and graduated at the age of 20 at the head of his class. After graduating he was admitted to the practice of medicine and relocated to Charleston, SC, where he pursued that profession. In 1824 he was briefly a professor of chemistry at West Point, where he resigned after a few months, and subsequently several years of his labor were devoted to assisting Noah Webster

Noah Webster

Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...

 in editing his great American Dictionary of the English Language

Webster's Dictionary

Webster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...

of 1828. Most of his life was spent at his home in New Haven, CT.

Works

• His poetic works include Prometheus
  Prometheus
  In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
  
  and The Dream of a Day (1843).
• A short poem by him The Language of Flowers
  The Language of Flowers
  "The Language of Flowers" is a song from a poem by the American poet and botanist James Gates Percival, with music written by the English composer Edward Elgar, when he was only fourteen years old. It is dated 29 May 1872, inscribed "by Edward W...
  
  was set to music by the English composer Edward Elgar
  Edward Elgar
  Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
  
  at the age of fourteen.

External links