The Bard of Alamo

James Buchanan Elmore

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Montgomery County poet James B. Elmore. Elmore, who was nicknamed the 'Bard of Alamo,' was born on a 900-acre farm in Ripley township on January 25, 1857. He graduated from Alamo Academy and taught school for twenty years. He published six volumes of poetry in his lifetime. His obituary from March 12, 1942, claims that the "pastoral scenes with which he was familiar inspired most of the writings of the benign bard from Ripley township."
Here's an excerpt from his poem, "Crawfordsville, Alias Athene":

The city of Crawford is a beautiful town,
Where knowledge and learning doth abound,
In the great theatrical arena;
It is a place that has much fame,
And transient people are gently tame
When in the city of Athene.

"The Monon Wreck" describes a train accident; Elmore describes the aftermath of the wreck in these verses:

Tears are flowing thick and fast
From every one of the mangled mass;
And, laying there, we hear their prayers,
Asking the Lord to relieve their cares ...

But there they lay on the crimson snow--
Their hearts have ceased to ebb and flow;
Quite as cold as a frozen chunk,
With a lady's heart upon a stump. ...

And yonder in the wreck I see
A man that's pinioned down by the knee,
And hear him calmly for to say:
"Cut, oh, cut my leg away!"

These poems and more can be found in Love Among the Mistletoe, Poems by James B. Elmore.