Introduction
Born: May 20, 1841, Uwchlan, Pennsylvania.
Died: February 2, 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Buried: West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
Born: May 20, 1841, Uwchlan, Pennsylvania.
Died: February 2, 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Buried: West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
Sarah was the daughter of Paxson Vickers and Ann Thomas Lewis, and wife of John Oberholtzer.
She lived at various times near Cambria Station, Chester County, Pennsylvania, and in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
Her family were ardent abolitionists. Besides hundreds of slaves they helped on their way to Canada, their home entertained such guests as John Greenleaf Whittier, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, and Bayard Taylor.
Sarah was educated at Thomas’ Friends Boarding School and the Millersville State Normal School.
She began to write for newspapers and magazines at age 18. A number of her poems were set to music by different composers. Among the best known are The Bayard Taylor Burial Ode, sung as Pennsylvania’s tribute to her dead poet at his funeral service in Longwood, March 15, 1889, and Under the Flowers, a Decoration Ode.
She served as World Superintendent of School Savings Banks department of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
The fair and beautiful angel
Of Life, one autumn day,
Gave us a blossom immortal,
Set in the frailest clay.
We cherished and watched it fondly,
Through clouded months and clear,
Our prayers the cords that held it.
Two angels waited near.
We felt the thrill of their presence,
The angels of Life and Death,
And feared the flower God loaned us
Would vanish at a breath.
But its opening leaves grew stronger,
The autumns glad became.
Till our blossom tall, expanding,
Can full existence claim.
The Red Riding-Hood
October
Has vanished oft away,
This one, our first-born darling, here
Drops thy thirteenth birthday.
We give thee no gold nor honor,
Chant thee no empty praise,
We only bid thee remember
The sweet and early ways.
We cull thee a rose from the garden,
Perfect in form and strong.
Portraiture of unfoldings fair
That to the earth belong.
There’s thought in the opening rosebud:
Wait ’till it opens, dear.
And speaks with its gold-lipped petals
Unto thy inner ear.
Wait till it tells thee, around it
Were thorns and dust and leaves,
That only by innate patience
And power it bloom achieves.
The world is of broken shadow;
The edges of storm and sun
Will often wound and caress thee
Before thy height is won.
O let that height be purity!
Thy footsteps good to man,
And in the end may some one be
Glad that thy life began.
’Tis not how much we hold, dear son,
That counts as loss or gain.
But what we give sheds light abroad
To fall on us again.
There’s nothing really valuable
But love, and good we do.
Man comes but as a rose to bloom
And fade from earthly view.
The Lord smiles on the opening rose
Christ lays His hand on thee:
We kiss it down, and humbly pray
From blight it keep thee free.
Sara Louisa Oberholtzer, 1881
In Daisies of Verse, 1886