Written By Alice Gibb
When Robert Elliott (1858-1902) of Tamalghmore Farm, London Township, died too soon at age 44, his friends wanted to create a special memorial. That memorial was a small book of poetry, simply called Robert Elliott’s Poems, published by the Baconian Club of London in 1904. It remains a moving tribute to a shy-looking man who “had an observant mind and a sympathetic heart.”
Elliott, the youngest son of John and Mary Elliott, attended Swamp College School, and planned on making teaching his career. He attended Toronto Normal School but uncertain health prevented him from teaching or taking part in any hard physical labor on the farm.
The poems of Robbie Burns had long been favorite reading matter in the Elliott home, so perhaps it’s not surprising that Elliott began putting his observations into poems. Several of his poems were published in The Farmer’s Advocate; he also spoke on various topics at the Entomological Society of Ontario. Elliott spent hours studying the birds, wildflowers, reptiles and mammals found around the family’s farm at Plover Mills. In fact the community’s name of Plover Mills was suggested by Elliott, after a bird that was often spotted in the area. In the late 1880s, the Plover Mills community included two stores, two mills, a cheese factory, church, shoemaker, post office, blacksmith shop and carriage-making operation. Today, all that remains of Plover Mills is a beautiful valley beside the Thames, with a few remaining signs of the old milling operation.
Elliott’s interest in the natural world led to friendships with other writers and naturalists, including W.E. Saunders, John Dearness of the London Normal School, author Cy Warman and entrepreneur Frank Lawson. In fact, it was the Lawson and Jones printing company that published Elliott’s poetry.
Robert Elliott certainly did not write in order to achieve fame or even an income. He simply felt pleasure in expressing truths he learned on his walks and rambles. For example, he wrote of Plover Mills:
A winding road around a hill
Will lead you to an inlet still
Where willows nodding o’er the stream
Scarce dare disturb the lily’s dream.
The themes of Elliott’s poems ranged from Indian summer, to wild columbines, bobolinks, a tribute to the Scottish bard Robbie Burns and memoriams to friends – and an unidentified tramp – who had died.
Following his death, Robert Elliott’s friends wrote very moving tributes to the poet, which are included in the 1904 book. Perhaps the most moving was written by fellow poet Cy Warman who said of Elliott: “God turned his soul and set his song, And clarion-clear it rang; He walked the woodland summer long, And with the song-birds sang….”
In 1999, British Columbia publisher Tim Lawson, the great-grandson of Frank Lawson, republished Elliott’s poems in a beautiful limited edition volume titled Lightly Weave, The Poems of Robert Elliott.
