James Herbert Morse was born to Augustus and Lucinda Wright Morse at Hubbardston, Massachusetts, in 1841. He attended Harvard University and earned his A.B. degree in 1863 and his A.M. degree in 1866. In 1868 he became cofounder and head of the Morse and Rogers School, a private, classical institution for boys in New York City which operated until 1904. Morse married Lucy Gibbons in 1870, and the couple divided their time between residences in New York City and Cotuit, Massachusetts.

In literary taste, as in ancestry (the family founders settled in Massachusetts in 1635), Morse seems to have been the classic Puritan; his major forms of expression were the lyric and the review essay. He wrote and published hundreds of lyrics during his long career, most of which fall into the category of nature poetry. Morse, however, was known to crusade in verse--one poem, for instance, addresses the issue of international copyright...