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The poet Agnes Rand Lee is not well-known today but she wrote some beautiful verses. She was the second daughter of the famed cartographer William H. Rand. She was educated in Switzerland and published frequently in Poetry magazine. In 1926, she won the magazine’s Guarantors’ Prize, which had previously been won by Robert Frost.
I like this poem a lot:
LONG DISTANCE LINE
Agnes Lee
More wonderful than all my joy of heart!
To know the sudden nearness of his mood,
That for a little moment we, apart,
Together stood.
That same low voice across my garden-aisles
Might not have reached my ear, for wind or bird.
But it has spoken across a thousand miles!
And I have heard!
In 1899, Agnes Lee and her daughter Harriet, nicknamed Peggy, were photographed at home in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts by none other than the great Gertrude Käsebier.
Käsebier named this photograph Blessed Art Thou Among Women. She said it represented hope for the future.
Archive.org
It’s not surprising to learn that Agnes Rand Lee, a poet and author, was the daughter of William H. Rand, co-founder of publishing company Rand-McNally.
Ah, right you are! I remembered Rand McNally for his maps but I forgot all about his publishing company!