Sadakichi Hartmann

Sadakichi Hartmann (1867-1944) born on Dejima Island in Nagasaki, Japan, to a Prussian merchant father and a Japanese mother who died a few months after he was born. Shortly after his mother’s death, Hartmann was sent to Hamburg, Germany to live with a wealthy uncle. Hartmann’s father next sent him to Philadelphia in 1882. Where he met Walt Whitman and became a U.S. citizen. He was a poet, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, and art historian.

Why I Love Thee

Why I love thee?

Ask why the seawind wanders,

Why the shore is aflush with the tide,

Why the moon through heaven meanders;

Like seafaring ships that ride

On a sullen, motionless deep;

Why the seabirds are fluttering the strand

Where the waves sing themselves to sleep

And starshine lives in the curves of the sand.

— Sadakichi Hartmann