Richard Clipston Sturgis Jr.

Richard Clipston Sturgis Jr. (1880–1910) was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the son of noted architect R. Clipston Sturgis and his wife Esther Mary Ogden. He attended St. Paul's School ('01) and Harvard University ('04) [1], following in his fathers footsteps became an architect. He died of pneumonia at age thirty in his home in Boston. His untimely death is memorialized in a poem by William Wordsworth engraved in the New Advent Church (Boston) which his father designed.

 THERE was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
 And islands of Winander!--many a time,

 At evening, when the earliest stars began
 To move along the edges of the hills,
 
 Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
 Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
 
 Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
 Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
 
 Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
 Has carried far into his heart the voice
 
 Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
 Would enter unawares into his mind
 
 With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
 Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
 
 Into the bosom of the steady lake.
 This boy was taken from his mates, and died
 
 In childhood, ere he was full man.
 Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale.

1. Richard Clipston Sturgis Jr. at the archINFORM database.