"I love the rainy day, the quiet room, the books, the
pictures and the glowing fire,” lyric poet and dramatist
Arthur Upson (1877-1908) once wrote to a friend.
Acclaimed for its purity of form, Upson's poetry often
expressed a strong passion for the beauties of nature.
His death at age 31 cut short a literary career filled
with such promise that many contemporary critics predicted
he would become one of the leading poets of his time.
Upson and his family moved to Minnesota from New York
in 1894, and he entered the University with the class
of 1898. He struggled with poor health most of his adult
life and was unable to complete the requirements for
a degree. However, in 1906 the University awarded him
one anyway after the publication of one of his volumes
of distinguished poetry. The Bellman, a small but influential
literary magazine of the early 1900s, was one of the
first periodicals to publish his work.
As a student, Upson wrote the second verse to “Hail!
Minnesota,” a song composed by Truman Rickard that would
become the University hymn and later the official state
song. Upson˙s stanza reflects his love of Minnesota's
natural beauty:
Like the stream that bends to sea / Like the pine that
seeks the blue / Minnesota still for thee / Thy sons
are strong and true./ From their woods and waters fair
/ From their prairies waving far / At thy call they
throng / With their shout and song / Hailing thee their
Northern Star.
In 1906 he became a lecturer in the English department,
teaching through a year when he was never well. Two
years later, Upson drowned while boating alone on Lake
Bemidji in northern Minnesota, where he had gone to
finish a verse play while on vacation.
Upson's friends collected and published two volumes
of his works posthumously, and when Walter Library opened
in 1924, his friend Ruth Shepard Phelps led the effort
to establish and furnish a reading room in his memory.
Phelps, author and professor of Romance languages, had
met Upson through a mutual literary club affiliation.
When the Arthur Upson Room formally opened on February
21, 1925, University Librarian Frank Walter accepted
its book collection on behalf of the University. In
his speech Walter said, “Some rare spirits can cultivate
immunity to confusion and can enjoy sweet solitude in
the middle of a crowd. Most of us are incapable of such
concentration. An air of quiet and ease and beauty in
the place where books are read are great aids to almost
everyone. To this purpose this room is dedicated.”
The reading room, bestowed to the University three
years later, is funded through an endowed trust.
