Henry Cuyler Bunner

Henry Cuyler Bunner (3 August 1855 – 11 May 1896) was an American novelist and poet born in Oswego, New York.

• Shake was a dramatist of note;
  He lived by writing things to quote.
  • "Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe" (i.e. Shakespeare, Molière and Goethe), line 9; by V. Hugo Dusenbury (pseudonym of Henry Cuyler Brunner), in Puck, Vol. 6, No. 151 (January 28, 1880), p. 762.
  • The couplet is today better known in the version published in A Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, ed. Evan Esar (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949), p. 42:
    • Shakespeare was a dramatist of note,
      Who lived by writing things to quote.

• What does he plant who plants a tree?
  He plants the friend of sun and sky;
  He plants the flag of breezes free;
  The shaft of beauty, towering high;
  He plants a home to heaven anigh
  For song and mother-croon of bird
  In hushed and happy twilight heard—
  The treble of heaven's harmony—
  These things he plants who plants a tree.
  • "The Heart of the Tree. An Arbor-Day Song", stanza 1, in The Poems of H. C. Bunner, new edition (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899), p. 249.

Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884

• What, know you not […]
  That love must kiss that Mortal’s eyes
  Who hopes to see fair Arcady?
  No gold can buy you entrance there;
  But beggared Love may go all bare—
  No wisdom won with weariness;
  But Love goes in with Folly’s dress—
  No fame that wit could ever win;
  But only Love may lead Love in
  To Arcady, to Arcady.
  • "The Way to Arcady", lines 45, 47–55, p. 5.
  • Compare Louise Chandler Moulton, "The Secret of Arcady" (1892).

• Ah woe is me, through all my days
  Wisdom and wealth I both have got,
  And fame and name and great men’s praise;
  But Love, ah! Love I have it not.
  • "The Way to Arcady", line 56, p. 5.

• A pitcher of mignonette,
  In a tenement's highest casement:
  Queer sort of flower-pot—yet
  That pitcher of mignonette
  Is a garden in heaven set,
  To the little sick child in the basement—
  The pitcher of mignonette,
  In the tenement's highest casement.
  • "A Pitcher of Mignonette. Triolet", p. 35

• Off with your hat as the flag goes by!
  And let the heart have its say;
  You're man enough for a tear in your eye
  That you will not wipe away.
  • "The Old Flag" (Evacuation Day, 1883), stanza 1, p. 92

• Works by Henry Cuyler Bunner at Project Gutenberg
• Free audio recording of "The Nice People" from Librivox
• Some H. C. Bunner stories, including 'What Mrs. Fortescue Did' and 'Zenobia's Infidelity' are read in Mister Ron's Basement Podcast