3 Kings

Janus the Roman god of doorways - - taking the place (temporarily) of Old Jeff, who is away visiting the Jeffersons - - will use this opp to reminisce in January on the Feast of the Epiphany about an epiphanic moment in Greenwich Village. Christopher Street's printer Frank Shay sold a poetry chapbook "in the shadow of old Jefferson Market" during 1922. The following year, this poet won the Pulitzer Prize.

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THE BALLAD OF THE HARP-WEAVER
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

NEW YORK: Printed for FRANK SHAY and sold by him at FOUR CHRISTOPHER ST., in the shadow of old JEFFERSON MARKET, 1922

. . . She sang as she worked,
And the harp-strings spoke;
Her voice never faltered,
And the thread never broke.
And when I awoke,
There sat my mother
With the harp against her shoulder
Looking nineteen
And not a day older,
A smile about her lips,
And a light about her head,
And her hands in the harp-strings
Frozen dead.
And piled up beside her
And toppling to the skies,
Were the clothes of a king's son,
Just my size.
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The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950] was published in 1922. Therefore, the text fell out of copyright and entered the public domain in the USA as of 1998. For The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver and several other works published in the early twenties, Millay won the the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923.
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Source:http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Jefferson Market
• • Woodcut: Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, frontispiece
NYC
New York Public Library
Jefferson Market.