Drake, Joseph Rodman

Joseph Rodman (1795-1820), an American poet. Born in New York City. The poet was distantly related to the admiral of that name. At the age of five he was a famous hand to get up conundrums. Having been banished to the attic one day for some offense, his sister started upstairs to see how the little seven-year-old was getting on and found him pacing the floor with a make-believe sword on his shoulder, guarding a heap of rubbish, and pretending that he was Don Quixote guarding his armor in the church. Drake tried clerking and then studied medicine. One sunny afternoon Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck were sailing with a friend on New York Bay, when a slight shower came up and a rainbow spanned the sky. Halleck made the remark that "It would be heaven to lounge on a rainbow and read Tom Campbell." This brought Drake and Halleck together, and they became famous chums. They wrote a series of witty poems for the New York Evening Post over the signature of Croaker & Co. or Croaker, Jr. Drake's fame rests chiefly on an exquisite poem, the Culprit Fay. This poem was written in three days, in the heat of an argument with Halleck and Cooper, to prove that a fairy tale may be made to grow out of American soil. The American Flag is considered Drake's best shorter poem. It begins with the familiar lines:

At Drake's death, Halleck wrote a beautiful poem from which the following stanza is often quoted: