by Marguerite Sand
Times-Union Women's Editor
"The world is full of poetry," it has been said. Not all of us are aware of it. Nor are many of us able to express it. Such is not the case of Virginia Scott Miner, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Scott, of 314 North Buffalo street.
Shafts of moonlight on the lake, a lily, rain, the flight of a bird all evoke words from the poet that have their own music. Mrs. Miner, a native of Lebanon, Ind., came to Warsaw with her parents and sister, Wilma when she was very young. From the first she showed an aptness to learn and an interest in those things about her. In school she always good at the head of her class, both at Warsaw and at Northwestern university were she majored in English.
As a student at the University, Mrs. Miner became interested in writing. Poetry was her hobby. She noticed that at the university there was a tendency to discredit moral principles, whose value had been learned as a child at home. One day, she wrote "Credo" in protest, affirming her faith in God.
Credo
Until heroic passion's stately song
and martial ring of trumpet call,
To fight the lesser for the greater cause
Can fail to stir that hidden thing,
That subtle, inner being that
Thru countless ages, men have called a soul;
Until divinity no longer speaks
In every breeze, nor we perceive
In glorious radiance of a far spread grace,
The rapture on the mother's face
When first she views her child;
Until a falling star, a field-born flower,
No longer wakes a paean of praise;
Until this creature we call mortal man
Has understood infinity-or ever can,
I shall believe in God.
Soon Mrs. Miner's works began to appear in the Ladies Home Journal, the Indianapolis News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Saturday Evening Post, Wings, Ave Maria and The Lantern.
Shortly after her graduation, she married Dewey Miner, a Warsaw boy. He is a graduate of Purdue university. For the past 30 years he has been a professor of physics in Kansas City, Mo., schools. Recently he was appointed supervisor of science of the entire school system in Kansas City. The Miners have one daughter, Margaret Virginia, who graduated from her father's alma mater. She worked six years for DuPont on the east coast.
At Kansas City, Mrs. Miner first substituted as a teacher in the schools, and for a number of years taught full time. She is now an English teacher at Pembroke Country Day school, a private school for boys. She is the only woman on the faculty.
Not only can Mrs. Miner write beautiful and many times profound verse, she is an accomplished pianist, giving her first recital at the age of 13.
Many of her writings are about things of nature. The summers of her childhood and youth were spent at Little Chapman Lake, where her parents had owned a cottage for many years. Mrs. Miner's latest poem was inspired by a blue heron she saw while visiting the Scotts this past summer. It will be interesting to read it when it appears in the Saturday evening Post. it is simply entitled "The Blue Heron."
The Johnny Appleseed legend has always been of special interest to Mrs. Miner, who has written enough poems on the subject to compile a book. Two years ago she spent some time abroad. The setting of an old Scottish castle, Holyrood, inspired her to write about it.
Her mother's favorite is-
I have cleaned house
In my heart today.
Cobwebs of malice
Are swept away:
Hurt and resentment-
Trash from the past-
Wait for the cleansing
Match, at last.
Weary, I watch
Now the task is done.
Strange-through clean windows
How bright is the sun.
One of the most beautiful, thought-provoking verse Mrs. Miner has written is "Many-Angel River" key poem of a compilation of her works.
Many-Angel River
I
Mother, let me go and play
Where the rushes quiver
At the margin, by the edge
Of Many-Angel river.
Let me gather there for you
Just one sculptured lily,
Where the irridescent fish
Parts the waters stilly-
Pause and sparkle-slip away
Past the ever-knowing;
Mother, let me flat along
Where the tide is going.
II
You might sink beneath the waves
And their velvet hold you-
All that silver-rippled strength
Might to close enfold you.
There is such a little space
(Scantly bubbled breath)
Keeping you apart from them-
Hush! (Keep farther, Death!)
Virginia Scot Miner's poems lend the mundane, the prosaic things of life, radiance. When you read her verse, you recognize many of your own thoughts-thoughts that come in the quietness of night, in the midst of the beauties of day. Thoughts that never become articulate for lack of expression.
Virginia Scott Miner