1801–1874
The Manchester Poet

Introduction

portrait

Born: Jan­ua­ry 4, 1801, Man­ches­ter, Eng­land.

Died: Sep­tem­ber 22, 1874, of an ep­i­lep­tic fit. At the time of his death, he was liv­ing in Prest­wich Park, Prest­wich, in a house bought for him by friends.

Biography

Son of a an Eng­lish fa­ther and French mo­ther, Swain is re­memb­ered as a po­et and en­grav­er.

He was hon­or­ary pro­fes­sor of po­et­ry at the Man­ches­ter Roy­al In­sti­tu­tion, and in 1856 was grant­ed a ci­vil list pen­sion.

Swain’s ep­i­taph for John Horse­field is noted by Eng­lish Her­i­tage as an el­e­ment of their ra­tion­ale for list­ing Horse­field’s tomb as a Grade II mo­nu­ment.

After his ear­ly edu­ca­tion, Swain be­gan work at age 15 as a clerk for Ta­va­ré and Hor­rocks, a dye-works that was part-owned by a ma­ter­nal uncle. Swain left his job at the dye-works aft­er 14 years to be­come a book­seller.

That ven­ture did not last, and two years lat­er he joined Lock­ett & Com­pa­ny, a Man­ches­ter firm of en­grav­ers and li­tho­graph­ers.

Swain ev­en­tu­al­ly bought the en­grav­ing de­part­ment from the firm to run it him­self. By the time the book­sell­ing ven­ture end­ed, Swain was friends with Ro­bert South­ey and oth­er li­ter­ary names. His po­ems had been pub­lished in jour­nals from 1822 on, and he had al­so had va­ri­ous more sub­stan­tial works pub­lished.

Works

Introduction

Imaginary Evils

Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow—
Leave things of the future to fate;
What’s the use to anticipate sorrow?
Life’s troubles come never too late!
If to hope overmuch be an error,
’Tis one that the wise have preferred;
And how often have hearts been in terror
Of evils that never occurred.

Have faith, and thy faith shall sustain thee—
Permit not suspicion and care
With invisible bonds to enchain thee,
But bear what God gives thee to bear.
By His Spirit supported and gladdened,
Be ne’er by forebodings deterred;
But think how oft hearts have been saddened
By fear of what never occurred.

Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow:
Short and dark as our life may appear,
We may make it still darker by sorrow—
Still shorter by folly and fear!
Half our troubles are half our invention,
And often from blessings conferred
Have we shrunk, in the wild apprehension
Of evils that never occurred.

Charles Swain
Poems, 1857

Sources

Lyrics

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