Whiffs from wild meadows

by Sam Walter Foss

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296 pages, Paperback

Published August 31, 2012

About the author

Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911), Librarian of the Somerville (Massachusetts) Public Library from1898 to 1911, was also a popular poet. At the 1906 Annual Meeting of the American Library Association, he read his poem entitled "The Song of the Library Staff". The poem has five stanzas each devoted to a different staff position.
Sam Walter Foss penned his first verses at Portsmouth High School here in NH. He went on to gain popular fame for his comic and philosophic writing. His poem "The House by the Side of the Road" was among the best loved in the nation. His fame has faded, but unlike many poets of his era – his works are still readable and relevant.

Sam Walter Foss. He is known today, almost exclusively, for a bit of verse entitled "The House by the Side of the Road." The poem urges everyone to stop being cynical and scornful to their neighbors and "be a friend to man." It is sentimental, honest, proactive and optimistic – essential Foss -- but it is far from his best work. Foss published five volumes of poetry.

He was born in rural Candia, New Hampshire. Foss lost his mother at age four, worked on his father's farm and went to school in the winter. He graduated from Brown University in 1882, and would be considered illustrious enough to warrant having his name inscribed on the mace. Beginning in 1898, he served as librarian at the Somerville Public Library in Massachusetts. He married a minister's daughter, with whom he had a daughter and son. Foss used to write a poem a day for the newspapers, and his five volumes of collected poetry are of the frank and homely “common man” variety.

Longtime baseball announcer Ernie Harwell alluded to one of Foss's poems whenever he described a batter taking a called third strike: "He stood there like the house by the side of the road and watched it go by."

"Bring me men to match my mountains, Bring me men to match my plains, Men with empires in their purpose, And new eras in their brains."

-- Sam Walter Foss, from "The Coming American", July 4, 1894

These words were inscribed on a granite wall at the United States Air Force Academy to inspire cadets and officers, but they were removed in 2003.

He is buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island.