Frank W. Gunsaulus by Eugene Field

This poem by Eugene Field honors Frank W. Gunsaulus, a well-known minister and educator from Chicago. Field takes this opportunity to recognize a man whose actions and words made a lasting impact on the city. It reads like a sincere elegy, paying tribute to a friend and public figure whose influence continues even after he is gone.

The tone, based on what the surviving text shows us, feels both commemorative and mournful. The simple dateline conveys a sense of quiet seriousness — a name respected, a city recognized, a moment captured in time.

Eugene Field, often called the 'Poet of Childhood,' was a journalist and poet based in Chicago who passed away in November 1895. Frank W. Gunsaulus (1856–1921) was a prominent minister and speaker in Chicago, known for his role as president of the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) and for his influence in the city's cultural scene. The two men shared connections within Chicago's lively literary and civic community in the late 19th century. This poem, dated March 1896 — just months after Field's passing — could be a fragment, a posthumously published tribute, or a piece of which the main text has been lost. It endures as a reflection of the friendship and mutual respect between two of Chicago's leading figures during the Gilded Age.