Nell Griffith Wilson

“All Men are Poets at Heart” --Emerson

H.S. Teacher Encouraged Nell Griffith to Become a Poet

By Byrd Weyler Kellogg

Parents, proud of what their children say, repeat their remarks to anyone who will listen. If they have a talent for writing, the parents preserve the utterances of their children in prose or verse. In the last classification belongs to Nell Griffith Wilson of Kenwood, who started putting her own thoughts into verse when she was nine years old.

By the time she started recording her own children’s bright sayings and ingenuous experiences, she had become a mature poet. Her books of poetry are now in the San Francisco and University of California libraries, and she has been requested to send her most recent book, “The Heart Remembers,” to the Library of Congress and the Huntington Library.

Mrs. Wilson used rhythm in capturing the quaint sayings and happiness of her little daughters, now Carol Wilson Coon and June Wilson Holley, because it was her own natural medium of expression. Her talent for verse writing was inherited from the later Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel A. Griffith of Vine Hill district, a mother “who wrote very good verse but not a great deal,” and a father who organized and conducted orchestras when not busy with his orchards and woods.

Adult encouragement to keep on writing was one of the factors that turned the former verse-writing Nell Griffith into the widely known poet, Nell Girffith Wilson. Miss Frances O’Meara, a former popular high school teacher, foresaw a literary future for the student poet just as she correctly believed schoolday art could become the avenue for success of Mrs. Wilson’s classmate, now the famous “Believe It or Not” Ripley.

Little Streams of Kenwood

The little streams of Kenwood

are running cold and clear,

And dreamy in the hush

of autumn haze,

With ferns and grasses bending

above their crystal pools,

They chant a song of warm

and peaceful days.

The little streams of Kenwood

unknowing of the sea,

May wander through green avenues

of trees,

While vivid leaves drift downward

to float upon their crest,

Like tiny ships with gay

and vagrant ease.

The little streams of Kenwood

are resting for the day

When winter bears its floodtide

from the hills,

And rushing down the canyons,

they sweep in curving grace

While every thirsty field

and hollow fills.

The little streams of Kenwood

can lead a troubled heart

Down happy trails, who follow

them along,

For idling over pebbles, or sweeping

in a flood,

The little streams of Kenwood

sing a song.

--Nell Griffith Wilson

Rich Offering

There is a love that knows

no barrier of race and creed.

That is a beauty

that the soul alone can see.

A loneliness

that has no answer to its need

Ave faith that God

is near throughout eternity.

There is a courage

that defies the deepest pain,

There is a happiness

that triumphs over grief.

A wealth not measured

by mere worldly gain,

and firm assurance

that effaces unbelief.

There is a loveliness

that only hearts discern,

There is a calmness

that surmounts all strife--

All these, and others,

let me humbly learn

That I may bring

rich offerings to eternal life.

--Nell Griffith Wilson