Release date is 2026-02-02

Todd E. May

"Collected poems of Clarence Edwin Flynn, second series" by Clarence Edwin Flynn is a collection of poems written in the early 20th century. The volume showcases accessible, rhymed verse steeped in Christian reflection, civic idealism, and everyday virtue, often celebrating home, childhood, teachers, and humble service. It moves easily between biblical meditations, patriotic pieces, rural nostalgia, and odes to modern wonders like the cinema, radio, and electricity, all in a gently didactic, uplifting tone.

The opening of this collection presents a transcriber’s note, acknowledgements, and a preface outlining Flynn’s background as a Methodist Episcopal clergyman and prolific periodical poet, including clarifications about his varying bylines. It then begins a chronological sweep of poems from 1902 onward that mix humor and homespun dialect (“Si Gidders”), biblical voices and devotion (“Hagar’s Song,” “The Open Tomb”), nostalgia for youth and home, and moral encouragement about hope, right conduct, and kindness. Early pieces engage war and peace with a Christian conscience (“A Price Unpaid,” “Two Princes,” “The New Day”), celebrate teachers and children, and repeatedly contrast light and shadow as emblems of life’s testing. A notable thread is Flynn’s fascination with new media and technology—silent films, the screen, radio, electricity—used as metaphors for memory, influence, and communal life, alongside prayers, patriotic tributes, and nature lyrics that frame service and faith as the measure of a life. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Chicago: Disciples Publication Society, 1922