John Cunningham

John Cunningham

(Born in Dublin in 1729; for many years connected with the North of
England—first as a Comedian at the Theatres of Alnwick, Darlington,
Durham, Harrogate, Liverpool, Newcastle-on-Tyne, North Shields,
Scarborough, Stockton-on-Tees, Sunderland, Whitby, and York, and
afterwards as a fellow-labourer with Mr. Slack on “The Newcastle
Chronicle,” from its commencement, March 24th, 1764, to his Death,
under the hospitable roof of his Employer, Sept. 18th 1773,Æ 44.)
I.
Sweet is the Shepherd’s pastoral Pipe, when blown
By lips like thine: for Nature in repose
Is ever lovely. In fancy, at the close
Of day—again at morn or noon—I own
Thy muse has led me oft to sylvan scenes, 5
That cheered my soul, when I was forced to breathe
A poison’d air, and almost sank beneath
The effluvia all around me. Ways and means
To mingle town and country more, to me
Seems practicable, and I hold the hope 10
That Man with every evil yet will cope,
And learn to look on Nature like to thee.
By many a “Pile of Ruins” I have stood,
And mused with thee in true poetic mood.

II.
Thy “oaten reed” has potent power to charm 15
Thy heart attuned to Nature. Purity and Peace
Live in thy hymnings, and I will never cease
To cherish righteous thoughts, and shield from harm
Thy lovers of thy sweet and gentle Muse.
No mawkish Swains and Shepherdesses gay, 20
Fitter to flit in drawing-rooms, are they
Whom thou depicts in thy Arcadian views,
But sterling Men and Women, such as live
Amidst green fields, tending their flocks and herds;
Loving the trees and flowers, and songs of birds, 25
And all the simple joys that such can give;
And when thou sings of dear Freemasonry,
Thou proves thy theme one of true poësy.

George Markham Tweddell

NOTE ON JOHN CUNNINGHAM TOMB.
In The Freemasons’ Magazine and Masonic Mirror, London,
December 3rd 1859, I wrote as follows:—“Can any Brother inform
me, When and Where John Cunningham, the Pastoral Poet, was
Initiated into Freemasonry, and what progress he made in the science?
The date of his Initiation can not be earlier than 1750, in which he
became ‘of the full age of twenty-one’; and it will be some years
previous to 1773, as on the 18th of September, in that year, he died.—I
should also be glad to know that the Mr. Slack, in conjunction with
whom the Poet laboured to establish The Newcastle Chronicle, in
1764, was a brother Mason. It was to the humanity and benevolence of
Mr. Slack that poor Bro. Cunningham owed all his subsistence in his
latter days; it was under Mr. Slack’s hospitable roof-tree that the Bard
was nursed in his last illness, and it was there that he died; and it was
Mr. Slack who erected that now dilapidated Monument over the
Poet’s Grave, in the unpoetical-looking Churchyard of St. John, at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne,—the future care and restoration of which
Tomb I beg most fraternally to recommend to our Brethren of the
Province of Northumberland”. I was in hope that so wealthy a body
would have generously responded to my appeal; but I might just have
whistled to the wind. Perhaps they never read the only Masonic
Periodical then published in England. In honouring the Poet, (even if
he had not been a Brother of the Craft) they would have helped to
spread the pure principles of Freemasonry; and, if necessary, every
good Brother would have freely given his mite, on the proposal having
been properly put before him. I am very sorry to see that an appeal has
been made to “the outer world who are not Freemasons,” to do a
trifling act of courtesy to the Tomb of one of the purest of Masonic
Poets after Twenty-Eight Years have elapsed since I humbly
attempted to have regarded as a sacred Masonic Duty, as well as a

Privilege.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cunningham_(poet_and_dramatist)