Sam Walter Foss


Sam Walter Foss was an American librarian and poet whose works included The House by the Side of the Road and The Coming American.

Life and career

Foss was born in rural Candia, New Hampshire, the son of Polly and Dyer Foss. He lost his mother at age four, worked on his father's farm and went to school in the winter. Foss attended the Tilton Seminary, now Tilton School, before attending and graduating from Brown University in 1882. He would eventually be considered illustrious enough to warrant having his name inscribed on the mace. Beginning in 1898, he served as librarian at the Somerville Public Library in Massachusetts. He married a minister's daughter, with whom he had a daughter and son. Foss used to write a poem a day for the newspapers, and his five volumes of collected poetry are of the frank and homely “common man” variety.
Foss is buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island. He is featured on a New Hampshire historical marker along New Hampshire Route 43 in Candia.

Influence

For many years the opening lines from Foss's The Coming American were inscribed on a granite wall at the United States Air Force Academy to inspire cadets and officers, but they were removed in 2003 after the Air Force Academy became coeducational.
The poem is currently engraved and displayed at Epcot in Orlando, Florida, and also inscribed onto the Rocky Mountain Cup trophy, which is contested annually between Major League Soccer teams Real Salt Lake and Colorado Rapids. The first line of the poem is displayed prominently on the south facade of the Jesse M. Unruh State Office Building in Sacramento, California.
Singer Lamya's song "Empires " takes most of its lyrics from The Coming American.
Longtime baseball announcer Ernie Harwell alluded to Foss's The House by the Side of the Road whenever he described a batter taking a called third strike: "He stood there like the house by the side of the road and watched it go by."
A recitation of Foss's Two Gods provides the lyrics to the song "A Greater God" by MC 900 Ft. Jesus.

Works