Sanborn was elected president of the Lampoon following Ernest Thayer, who would subsequently achieve fame with his Lampoon-esque poem, "Casey at the Bat".

Dear Mother, we leave thee to join the race Where no man may weaken or yield, And we look once again at thy beautiful face And the word that is wrought on they shield.

There is hope in our hearts, there is light in our eyes As we dream of the goal set before; Though we linger, unwilling to break the old ties, That shall bind us, alas, nevermore.

Upon graduation, Sanborn began living in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he had already begun work on the staff of the Republican, becoming the paper's "literary and dramatic sub-editor.

[12] In a March 6, 1889 obituary Franklin B. Sanborn provided The Republican it is stated that "[Tom's] passage from one mansion in the father's house to another was swift and we trust merciful.

[11] His brother Victor Channing Sanborn later documented that the stone marking Tom's grave was carved of Pentelic marble in Athens, "with emblems of aspiration and genius, recall[ing]his memory with a line of Greek verse copied from an antique tomb in Thebes.

"[14] The Concord community reached out to the grieving parents of Thomas Sanborn, who took up residence in the Emerson home and rented out their own from June to September.

"[1]The class of '86 and Harvard College lose a man whose life would have been devoted to letters, and whose genuine and versatile talent would hardly have failed to leave some mark in the world.Remembered by his contemporaries as a tragic figure who held much literary promise, Thomas Parker Sanborn came to be linked with a group of other 1890s Harvard poets who died young, including Hugh McCulloch, Philip Henry Savage, Trumbull Stickney and George Cabot Lodge.

Mr. Sanborn had not only great felicity of style in his light verses, but he could put into them what is far more rare in the work of very young men,-- a true love of whatever is charming, beautiful and ideal.

The class of '86 and Harvard College lose a man whose life would have been devoted to letters, and whose genuine and versatile talent would hardly have failed to leave some mark in the world.

"[15] In his 1943 memoirs, Santayana remembered Sanborn as "a poet of lyric and modest flights...His poems showed genuine feeling, not naturally in harmony with the over-intellectualized transcendentalism of Concord, Massachusetts, where his father was a conspicuous member of the Emersonian circle.

[16] I was born a moral aristocrat, able to obey only the voice of God, which means that of my own heart.... We will lie low, and dip under, until the flood has passed and wasted itself over our heads.

[18] In his biography of Henry Thoreau, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn included a portion of the poem "Endymion" by his son Thomas, who was seventeen at the time of its writing.

In an article detailing the events of his funeral, Frank Sanborn stated Tom read the poem for Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Or, last, when Winter binds the river bright With hard and gleaming ice — a shift-forged chain,— Even in that chill season 'tis delight To roam across that broad and glittering plain, Or skim its surface, as the short days wane, Gliding along with swift and steel-bound feet:— Truly the changes of the year are sweet.