Living with Legends

Historian Sherill Tippins once again steps up to the plate to provide Legends with invaluable information about the early history of the Chelsea.  She seems to be the only one in existance who knows this stuff, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude for dragging it back from obscurity into the light of day where it belongs.  Yes indeed visions are clearer at the Chelsea!

I found this poem in Google books and thought it was kind of funny, so I’m sending it to you.
It was inspired by the Chelsea Hotel roof.  It was published in 1915 in Reveries of a Busy Barrister by
General Stillman F. Kneeland, a Union Army general, lawyer, Progressive, art collector, amateur artist and poet, who lived at the Chelsea from at least 1912-1922. He put some of his paintings up for sale in 1913, according to the Times–including, apparently, a Rembrandt (it sold for $650), a Whistler, and a Gainsborough.  In 1922, when he was 77, he remarried–to the 70-year-old widow of the artist Eastman Johnson, and they moved to the country.  There’s a picture of him in the Google book online. He has lots of medals!  His preface for the book is signed, "Chelsea Hotel, December 15, 1914."

                ROOFLAND

On the heights of Roofland, bounded
   By a river and river and bay,
   With the glory of twilight surrounded,
We muse and we dream and we pray:–
      For visions are clearer,
      And God seems nearer,
On the heights at the close of day.

There throned on the throne of man’s making,
   And crowned by the stars above;
With the light of the moon just breaking,
   Over housetop, and highland,and cove:–
      Our hearts are glee,
      And our souls are free,–
For we live in the halo of love.

The night grows gray as we linger
   And music fills the street;
But we heed not the song, or the singer,
   Or the rhythmical patter of feet:
      For our souls are in tune
      With the gay old moon,
And our little world is complete.

Ah! Sadly these lines have confounded
   The past and the present with me;
The Metropilis now is bounded
   By a river, a sound and a sea;
      And the scene may be grander,
      As the moonlight splendor,
Bursts over the distant lea.

But my heart it is sad to the breaking,
   As the shadows flit over the bay;
On the heights of Roofland, forsaken,
   I muse, and I mourn, and I pray:–
      For it hath come to pass
      That my bonnie wee lass,
Forever hath passed away.

No guiding hand, no soul to pity,
   No hope, no light, no cheer,
The throbbing heart of the gay old city,
   Seems cold, and dead, and drear;
      Warm blood may flow
      In the homes below,
But not, dear Lord, not here.

Avaunt! This is Rooofland, and higher
   Than the realms of sorrow and strife;
And our souls are wondrously nigher,
   When freed from the fetters of life:
      Up here in God’s glory,
      We’ll repeat the old story,
My darling! My angel! My wife!