LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

POETS OF THE SOUTH

A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES

WITH

TYPICAL POEMS, ANNOTATED

BY

F. V. N. PAINTER, A.M., D.D.

Professor of Modern Languages in Roanoke College

Author of "A History of Education" " History of English Literature'

" Introduction to American Literature" etc.

ai»;<?.S , •

NEW YORK-:- CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY F. V. N. PAINTER.

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON,

POETS OF THE SOUTH. \v. P. 9

PREFACE

THE poets of the South, who constitute a worthy galaxy of poetic talent and achievement, are not sufficiently known. Even in the South, which might naturally be expected to take pride in its gifted singers, most of them, it is to be feared, are but little read.

This has been called an age of prose. Under the sway of what are regarded as " practical inter ests," there is a drifting away from poetic senti ment and poetic truth. This tendency is to be regretted, for material prosperity is never at its best without the grace and refinements of true culture. At the present time, as in former ages, the gifted poet is a seer, who reveals to us what is highest and best in life.

There is at present a new interest in literature in the South. The people read more ; and in recent years an encouraging number of Southern writers have achieved national distinction. With this literary renaissance, there has been a turning back to older authors.

It is hoped that this little volume will supply a real need. It is intended to call fresh attention to the poetic achievement of the South. While

228067

4 PREFACE

minor poets are not forgotten, among whose writings is found many a gem of poetry, it is the leaders of the chorus — Poe, Hayne, Timrod, Lanier, and Ryan — who receive chief considera tion. It may be doubted whether several of them have been given the place in American letters to which their gifts and achievements justly entitle them. It is hoped that the follow ing biographical and critical sketches of these men, each highly gifted in his own way, will lead to a more careful reading of their works, in which, be it said to their honor, there is no thought or sentiment unworthy of a refined and chivalrous nature.

F. V. N. PAINTER. SALEM, VIRGINIA.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH . . .7

II. EDGAR ALLAN POE . . . . . .29

III. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 49

IV. HENRY TIMROD ....... 65

V. SIDNEY LANIER . ~. . . . . 81

VI. ABRAM J. RYAN .... . » , .103

ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS 121

NOTES 209

POETS OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER I

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH

THE first poetic writer of this country had his home at Jamestown. He was George Sandys who came to Virginia in 1621, and succeeded his brother as treasurer of the newly established colony. Amid the hardships of pioneer colonial life, in which he proved himself a leading spirit, he had the literary zeal to complete his translation of Ovid's Metamor phoses, which he had begun in England. After the toilsome day, spent in introducing iron works or in encouraging shipbuilding, he sat down at night, within the shadow of surrounding forests, to con struct his careful, rhymed pentameters. The conditions under which he wrote were very far re moved from the Golden Age which he described, —

" Which uncompelled And without rule, in faith and truth, excelled,"

The promise of this bright, heroic beginning in poetry was not realized ; and scarcely another voice was heard in verse in the South before the Revolu tion.

7

8 POETF, OF THE SOUTH

The type of civilization developed in the South prior to the Civil War, admirable as it was in many other particulars, was hardly favorable to literature. The energies of the most intelligent portion of the population were directed to agriculture or to poli tics; and many of the foremost statesmen of our country — men like Washington, Jefferson, Mar shall, Calhoun, Benton — were from the Southern states. The system of slavery, while building up oaronial homes of wealth, culture, and boundless hospitality, checked manufacture, retarded the growth of cities, and turned the tide of immigra tion westward. Without a vigorous public school system, a considerable part of the non-slaveholding class remained without literary taste or culture.

The South has been chiefly an agricultural region, and has adhered to conservative habits of thought. While various movements in theology, philosophy, and literature were stirring New England, the South pursued the even tenor of its way. Of all parts of our country, it has been most tenacious of old customs and beliefs. Before the Civil War the cultivated classes of the Southern states found their intellectual nourishment in the older Eng lish classics, and Pope, Addison, and Shakespeare formed a part of every gentleman's library. There were no great publishing houses to stimulate liter ary production ; and to this day Southern writers are dependent chiefly on Northern publishers to give their works to the public. Literature was hardly taken seriously ; it was rather regarded, to use the words of Paul Hamilton Hayne, "as the

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH Q

choice recreation of gentlemen, as something fair and good, to be courted in a dainty, amateur fashion, and illustrated by apropos quotations from Lucretius, Virgil, or Horace." Thus it happened that before the Civil War literature in the South, whether prose or poetry, had a less vigorous development than in the Middle States and New England.

Yet it has been common to undervalue the liter ary work of the South. While literature was not generally encouraged there before the Civil War, — a fact lamented by gifted, representative writers, — there were at least two literary centers that exerted a notable influence. The first was Richmond, the home of Poe during his earlier years, and of the Southern Literary Messenger, in its day the most influential magazine south of the Potomac. It was founded, as set forth in its first issue, in 1834, to encourage literature in Virginia and the other states of the South ; and during its career of twenty-eight years it stimulated literary activity in a remark able degree. Among its contributors we find Poe, Simms, Hayne, Timrod, John Esten Cooke, John R. Thompson, and others — a galaxy of the best- known names in Southern literature.

The other principal literary center of the South was Charleston. "Legare's wit and scholarship," to adopt the words of Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, " brightened its social circle ; Calhoun's deep shadow loomed over it from his plantation at Fort Hill ; Gilmore Simms's genial culture broadened its sympathies. The latter was the Maecenas to a band of brilliant youths who used to meet for

IO POETS OF THE SOUTH

literary suppers at his beautiful home." Among these brilliant youths were Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod, two of the best poets the South has produced. The Southern Literary Ga zette, founded by Simms, and Russell's Magazine, edited by Hayne, were published at Charleston. Louisville and New Orleans were likewise literary centers of more or less influence.

Yet it is a notable fact that none of these liter ary centers gave rise to a distinctive group or school of writers. The influence of these centers did not consist in one great dominating principle, but in a general stimulus to literary effort. In this respect it may be fairly claimed that the South was more cosmopolitan than the North. In New England, theology and transcendentalism in turn dominated literature ; and not a few of the group of writers who contributed to the Atlantic Monthly were profoundly influenced by the anti- slavery agitation. They struggled up Parnassus, to use the words of Lowell, —

" With a whole bale of isms tied together with rime."

But the leading writers of the South, as will be seen later, have been exempt, in large measure, from the narrowing influence of one-sided theo logical or philosophical tenets. They have not as pired to the role of social reformers ; and in their loyalty to art, they have abstained from fanatical energy and extravagance.

The major poets of the South stand out in strong, isolated individuality. They were not bound

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH I I

together by any sympathy other than that of a common interest in art and in their Southern home. Their genius was nourished on the choicest literary productions of England and of classic antiquity; and looking, with this Old World culture, upon Southern landscape and Southern character, they pictured or interpreted them in the language of poetry.

The three leading poets of the Civil War period — Hayne, Timrod, and Ryan — keenly felt the issues involved in that great struggle. All three of them were connected, for a time at least, with the Confederate army. In the earlier stages of the conflict, the intensity of their Southern feeling flamed out in thrilling lyrics. Timrod's martial songs throb with the energy of deep emotion. But all three poets lived to accept the results of the war, and to sing a new loyalty to our great Republic.

The South has not been as unfruitful in litera ture as is often supposed. While there have been very few to make literature a vocation, a surpris ingly large number have made it an avocation. Law and literature, as we shall have occasion to note, have frequently gone hand in hand. A re cent work on Southern literature l enumerates more than twelve hundred writers, most of whom have published one or more volumes. There are more than two hundred poets who have been thought worthy of mention. More than fifty poets have been credited to Virginia alone ; and an ex amination of their works reveals, among a good deal that is commonplace and imitative, many a little

1 Manly 's Southern Literature.

12 POETS OF THE SOUTH

gem that ought to be preserved. Apart from the five major poets of the South — Poe, Hayne, Timrod, Lanier, and Ryan — who are reserved for special study, we shall now consider a few of the minor poets who have produced verse of excellent quality.

Francis Scott Key (1780-1843) is known through out the land as the author of The Star-spangled Banner, the noblest, perhaps, of our patriotic hymns. He was born in Frederick County, Mary land, and was educated at St. John's College, An napolis. He studied law, and after practicing with success in Frederick City, he removed to Washing ton, where he became district attorney.

During the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, he was detained on board a British vessel, whither he had gone to secure the release of a friend. All night long he watched the bombard ment with the keenest anxiety. In the morning, when the dawn disclosed the star-spangled banner still proudly waving over the fort, he conceived the stirring song, which at once became popular and was sung all over the country. Though a volume of his poems, with a sketch by Chief-Justice Taney, was published in 1857, it is to The Star-spangled Banner that he owes his literary fame.

"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last

gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the

perilous fight

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming ?

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH 13

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air. Gave proof through the night that our flag was still

there.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ? "

Few poems written in the South have been more popular than My Life is like the Summer Rose. It has the distinction of having been praised by Byron. Its author, Richard Henry Wilde (1789- 1847), was born in Dublin, Ireland, but brought up and educated in Augusta, Georgia. He studied law, became attorney general of his adopted state, and later entered Congress, where he served for several terms. He was a man of scholarly tastes and poetic gifts. He spent five years abroad, chiefly in Italy, where his studies in Italian litera ture afterwards led to a work on Torquato Tasso. It was on the occasion of this trip abroad that he wrote A Farewell to America, which breathes a noble spirit of patriotism : —

'' Farewell, my more than fatherland !

Home of my heart and friends, adieu ! Lingering beside some foreign strand,

How oft shall I remember you 1

How often, o'er the waters blue, Send back a sigh to those I leave,

The loving and beloved few, Who grieve for me, — for whom I grieve 1 "

On • his return to America, he settled in New Orleans, where he became a professor of law in the University of Louisiana. Though the author of

14 POETS OF THE SOUTH

a volume of poems of more than usual excellence, it is the melancholy lyric, My Life is like the Summer Rose, that, more than all the rest, has given him a niche in the temple of literary fame. Is it necessary to quote a stanza of a poem so well known ?

" My life is like the summer rose,

That opens to the morning sky, But, ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground — to die 1 Yet on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept the waste to see — But none shall weep a tear for me ! "

George D. Prentice (1802-1870) was a native of Connecticut. He was educated at Brown Univer sity, and studied law ; but he soon gave up his profession for the more congenial pursuit of lit erature. In 1828 he established at Hartford the New England Weekly Review, in which a number of his poems, serious and sentimental, appeared. Two years later, at the age of twenty-eight, he turned over his paper to Whittier and removed to Louisville, where he became editor of \.\\o,Jotirnal.

He was a man of brilliant intellect, and soon made his paper a power in education, society, and politics. Apart from his own vigorous contribu tions, he made his paper useful to Southern letters by encouraging literary activity in others. It was chiefly through his influence that Louisville became one of the literary centers of the South. He was

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH 15

a stout opponent of secession ; and when the Civil War came his paper, like his adopted state, suf fered severely.

Among his writings is a Life of Henry Clay. A collection of his witty and pungent paragraphs has also been published under the title of Prcn- ticeana. His poems, by which he will be longest remembered, were collected after his death. His best-known poem is The Closing Year. Though its vividness and eloquence are quite remark able, its style is, perhaps, too declamatory for the taste of the present generation. The follow ing lines, which express the poet's bright hopes for the political future of the world, are taken from The Flight of Years : —

" Weep not, that Time Is passing on — it will ere long reveal A brighter era to the nations. Hark ! Along the vales and mountains of the earth There is a deep, portentous murmuring Like the swift rush of subterranean streams, Or like the mingled sounds of earth and air, When the fierce Tempest, with sonorous wing, Heaves his deep folds upon the rushing winds, And hurries onward with his night of clouds Against the eternal mountains. 'Tis the voice Of infant Freedom — and her stirring call Is heard and answered in a thousand tones From every hilltop of her western home — And lo — it breaks across old Ocean's flood — And Freedom, Freedom ! is the answering shout Of nations starting from the spell of years.

1 6 POETS OF THE SOUTH

The dayspring! — see — 'tis brightening in the heavens !

The watchmen of the night have caught the sign —

From tower to tower the signal fires flash free — •

And the deep watchword, like the rush of seas

That heralds the volcano's bursting flame,

Is sounding o'er the earth. Bright years of hope

And life are on the wing. — Yon glorious bow

Of Freedom, bended by the hand of God,

Is spanning Time's dark surges. Its high arch,

A type of love and mercy on the cloud,

Tells that the many storms of human life

Will pass in silence, and the sinking waves,

Gathering the forms of glory and of peace,

Reflect the undimmed brightness of the Heaven.'5

William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), a native of Charleston, was a man of remarkable versa tility. He made up for his lack of collegiate training by private study and wide experience. He early gave up law for literature, and during his long and tireless literary career was editor, poet, dramatist, historian, and novelist. He had something of the wideness of range of Sir Walter Scott ; and one can not but think that, had he lived north of Mason and Dixon's line, he might occupy a more prominent place in the literary annals of our country. He has been styled the " Cooper of the South"; but it is hardly too much to say that in versatility, culture, and literary produc tiveness he surpassed his great Northern con temporary.

Simms was a poet before he became a novelist. The poetic impulse manifested itself early ; and

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH I?

before he was twenty-five he had published three or more volumes of verse. In 1832 his imagina tive poem, Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, was brought out by the Harpers ; and it introduced him at once to the favorable notice of what Poe called the " Literati " of New York. His subsequent volumes of poetry were devoted chiefly to a description of Southern scenes and incidents.

As will be seen in our studies of Hayne and Timrod, Simms was an important figure in the literary circles of Charleston. His large, vigorous nature seemed incapable of jealousy, and he took delight in lending encouragement to young men of literary taste and aspiration. He was a laborious and prolific writer, the number of his various works — poetry, drama, history, fiction — reaching nearly a hundred. Had he written less rapidly, his work might have gained, perhaps, in artistic quality.

Among the best of Simms's novels is a series devoted to the Revolution. The characters and incidents of that conflict in South Carolina are graphically portrayed. The Partisan, the first of this historic series, was published in 1835. The Yemassee is an Indian story, in which the char acter of the red man is less idealized than in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. In The Damsel of Darien, the hero is Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific.

The verse of Simms is characterized by facile vigor rather than by fine poetic quality. The fol-

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 2

1 8 POETS OF THE SOUTH

lowing lines, which represent his style at its best, bear a lesson for the American people to-day : —

" This the true sign of ruin to a race —

It undertakes no march, and day by day Drowses in camp, or, with the laggard's pace,

Walks sentry o'er possessions that decay ;

Destined, with sensible waste, to fleet away ; — For the first secret of continued power

Is the continued conquest ; — all our sway Hath surety in the uses of the hour ; If that we waste, in vain walled town and lofty tower ! "

Edward Coate Pinkney (1802-1828) died before his poetic gifts had reached their full maturity. He was the son of the eminent lawyer and diplo matist, William Pinkney, and was born in London, while his father was American minister at the court of St. James. At the age of nine he was brought home to America, and educated at Balti more. He spent eight years in the United States navy, during which period he visited the classic shores of the Mediterranean. He was impressed particularly with the beauty of Italy, and in one of his poems he says : —

'' It looks a dimple on the face of earth, The seal of beauty, and the shrine of mirth ; Nature is delicate and graceful there, The place's genius feminine and fair : The winds are awed, nor dare to breathe aloud ; The air seems never to have borne a cloud, Save where volcanoes send to heaven their curled \nd solemn smokes, like altars of the world."

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH IQ

In 1824 he resigned his place in the navy to take up the practice of law in Baltimore. His health was not good ; and he seems to have occu pied a part of his abundant leisure (for he was not successful in his profession) in writing poetry. A thin volume of poems was published in 1825, in which he displays, especially in his shorter pieces, an excellent lyrical gift. The following stanzas are from A HcaltJi : -

" I fill this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon ; To whom the better elements

And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air,

'Tis less of earth than heaven.

" Her every tone is music's own,

Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody

Dwells ever in her words ; The coinage of her heart are they,

And from her lips each flows As one may see the burdened bee

Forth issue from the rose."

Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850), like most Southern writers before the Civil War, mingled literature with the practice of law. He was born at Martinsburg, Virginia, and educated at Prince ton. He early manifested a literary bent, and wrote for the Knickerbocker Magazine, the oldest

2O POETS OF THE SOUTH

of our literary monthlies, before he was out of his teens. He was noted for his love of outdoor life, and became a thorough sportsman. In 1847 ne published a volume entitled Froissart Ballads and Other Poems. The origin of the ballad portion of the volume, as explained in the preface, is found in the lines of an old Roman poet : —

" A certain freak has got into my head,

Which I can't conquer for the life of me, Of taking up some history, little read, Or known, and writing it in poetry."

The best known of his lyrics is Florence Vane which has the sincerity and pathos of a real experi ence : —

" I loved thee long and dearly,

Florence Vane ; My life's bright dream, and early,

Hath come again ; I renew, in my fond vision,

My heart's dear pain, My hope, and thy derision,

Florence Vane.

" The ruin lone and hoary,

The ruin old, Where thou didst hark my story.

At even told, — That spot — the hues Elysian

Of sky and plain — I treasure in my vision,

Florence Vane.

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH 21

" Thou wast lovelier than the roses

In their prime ; Thy voice excelled the closes

Of sweetest rhyme ; Thy heart was as a river

Without a main.

• Would I had loved thee never,

Florence Vane ! "

Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867) is chiefly remem bered for a single poem that has touched the national heart. He was born in Danville, Ken tucky. After taking a course in law, he accepted a clerkship in the Treasury Department at Wash ington. On the outbreak of the Mexican War he enlisted as a private soldier, and by his gallant ser vice rose to the rank of captain and major. After the close of the war he returned to Washington and engaged for a time in the practice of his pro fession. Later he became editor of the Mobile Register, and Frankfort Yeoman in Kentucky. In the Civil War he served as colonel in the Confed erate army.

The poem on which his fame largely rests is The Bivouac of the Dead. It was written to commemorate the Kentuckians who fell in the battle of Buena Vista. Its well-known lines have furnished an apt inscription for several military cemeteries : —

" The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo ; No more on Life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few.

22 POETS OF THE SOUTH

On Fame's eternal camping-ground

Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round,

The bivouac of the dead."

O'Hara died in Alabama in 1867. The legislature of Kentucky paid him a fitting tribute in having his body removed to Frankfort and placed by the side of the heroes whom he so worthily commemo rated in his famous poem.

Francis Orrery Ticknor (1822-1874) was a phy sician living near Columbus, Georgia. He led a busy, useful, humble life, and his merits as a poet have not been fully recognized. In- the opinion of Paul Hamilton Hayne, who edited a volume of Tick- nor's poems, he was "one of the truest and sweetest lyric poets this country has yet produced." The Virginians of the Valley was written after the soldiers of the Old Dominion, many of whom bore the names of the knights of the " Golden Horse shoe," had obtained a temporary advantage over the invading forces of the North : —

" We thought they slept ! — the sons who kept

The names of noble sires, And slumbered while the darkness crept

Around their vigil fires ; But aye the " Golden Horseshoe " knights

Their Old Dominion keep, Whose foes have found enchanted ground,

But not a knight asleep."

But a martial lyric of greater force is Little Giffen> written in honor of a blue-eyed lad of

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH 23

East Tennessee. He was terribly wounded in some engagement, and after being taken to the hospital at Columbus, Georgia, was finally nursed back to life in the home of Dr. Ticknor. Beneath the thin, insignificant exterior of the lad, the poet discerned the incarnate courage of the hero : —

" Out of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire ; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle and he sixteen !) Specter ! such as you seldom see, Little Giffen of Tennessee !

******

" Word of gloom from the war, one day ; Johnson pressed at the front, they say. Little Giffen was up and away ; A tear — his first — as he bade good-by, Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye. ' I'll write, if spared ! ' There was news of the fight ; But none of Giffen. — He did not write."

But Ticknor did not confine himself to war themes. He was a lover of Nature ; and its forms, and colors, and sounds — as seen in April Morning, Twi light, The Hills, Among the Birds — appealed to his sensitive nature. Shut out from literary centers and literary companionship, he sang, like Burns, from the strong impulse awakened by the presence of the heroic and the beautiful.

John R. Thompson (1823-1873) has deserved well of the South both as editor and author, He was born in Richmond, and educated at the University

24 POETS OF THE SOUTH

of Virginia, where he received the degree of Bache lor of Arts in 1845. Two years later he became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger ; and during the twelve years of his editorial manage ment, he not only maintained a high degree of literary excellence, but took pains to lend encour agement to Southern letters. It is a misfortune to our literature that his writings, particularly his poetry, have never been collected.

The incidents of the Civil War called forth many a stirring lyric, the best of which is his well-known Music in Camp : —

" Two armies covered hill and plain,

Where Rappahannock's waters Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain Of battle's recent slaughters."

The band had played "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle," which in turn had been greeted with shouts by "Rebels" and "Yanks."

" And yet once more the bugles sang

Above the stormy riot ; No shout upon the evening rang — There reigned a holy quiet.

" The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood

Poured o'er the glistening pebbles ; All silent now the Yankees stood, And silent stood the Rebels.

" No unresponsive soul had heard

That plaintive note's appealing, So deeply * Home, Sweet Home ' had stirred The hidden founts of feeling.

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH 2$

" Or Blue or Gray, the soldier sees,

As by the wand of fairy, The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees, The cabin by the prairie."

On account of failing health, Thompson made a visit to Europe, where he spent several years, con tributing from time to time to Blackwood's Maga zine and other English periodicals. On his return to America, he was engaged on the editorial staff of the New York Evening Post, with which he was connected till his death, in 1873. He is buried in Hollywood cemetery at Richmond.

" The city's hum drifts o'er his grave, And green above the hollies wave

Their jagged leaves, as when a boy, On blissful summer afternoons, He came to sing the birds his runes,

And tell the river of his joy."

The verse of Mrs. Margaret J. Preston (1820- 1897) rises above the commonplace both in senti ment and craftsmanship. She belongs, as some critic has said, to the school of Mrs. Browning; and in range of subject and purity of sentiment she is scarcely inferior to her great English con temporary. She was the daughter of the Rev. George Junkin, D.D., the founder of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, and for many years presi dent of Washington College at Lexington, Virginia. In 1857 she married Colonel J. T. L. Preston of the Virginia Military Institute.

26 POETS OF THE SOUTH

For many years she was a contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger, in which her earlier poems first made their appearance. Though a native of Philadelphia, she was loyal to the South during the Civil War, and found inspiration in its deeds of heroism. Beechen-brook is a rhyme of the war; and though well-nigh forgotten now, it was read, on its publication in 1865, from the Poto mac to the Gulf. Among her other writings are Old Songs and New and Cartoons. Her poetry is pervaded by a deeply religious spirit, and she re peatedly urges the lesson of supreme resignation and trust, as in the following lines: —

" What will it matter by-and-by

Whether my path below was bright, Whether it wound through dark or light, Under a gray or golden sky, When I look back on it, by-and-by ?

" What will it matter by-and-by

Whether, unhelped, I toiled alone, Dashing my foot against a stone, Missing the charge of the angel nigh, Bidding me think of the by-and-by ? * * * * #

" What will it matter ? Naught, if I Only am sure the way I've trod, Gloomy or gladdened, leads to God,

Questioning not of the how, the why,

If I but reach Him by-and-by.

" What will I care for the unshared sigh, If in my fear of lapse or fall, Close I have clung to Christ through all,

MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH 2?

Mindless how rough the road might lie, Sure He will smoother! it by-and-by.

" What will it matter by-and-by ?

Nothing but this : that Joy or Pain Lifted me skyward, — helped me to gain. Whether through rack, or smile, or sigh, Heaven, home, all in all, by-and-by."

In this rapid sketch of the minor singers of the South, it has been necessary to omit many names worthy of mention. It is beyond our scope to speak of the newer race of poets. Here and there delicate notes are heard, but there is no evidence that a great singer is present among us. Yet there is no ground for discouragement ; the changed conditions and the new spirit that has come upon our people may reasonably be expected to lead to higher poetic achievement.

In some respects the South affords a more prom ising field for literature than any other part of our country. There is evident decadence in New Eng land. But the climate and scenery, the history and traditions, and the chivalrous spirit and unexhausted intellectual energies of the South contain the prom ise of an Augustan age in literature. In no insig nificant degree its rich-ored veins have been worked in prose. Joel Chandler Harris has successfully wrought in the mine of negro folk-lore ; George W. Cable has portrayed the Creole life of Louisi ana ; Charles Egbert Craddock has pictured the types of character found among the Tennessee mountains ; Thomas Nelson Page has shown us

2$ POETS OF THE SOUTH

the trials and triumphs of Reconstruction days ; and Miss Mary Johnston has revived the picturesque scenes of colonial times. There has been an obvi ous literary awakening in the South ; and sooner or later it will find utterance, let us hope, in some strong-voiced, great- souled singer.

It is true that there are obstacles to be overcome. There are no literary magazines in the South to encourage and develop our native talent as in the days of the Southern Literary Messenger. Southern writers are still dependent upon Northern periodicals, in which they can hardly be said to find a cordial welcome. It seems that the South in a measure suffers the obloquy that rested of old upon Nazareth, from which the Pharisees of the metropolis maintained that no good thing could come.

But the most serious drawback of all is the dis favor into which poetry has fallen, or rather which it has brought upon itself. In the remoteness of its themes and sentiments, in its over-anxiety for a faultless or striking technique, it has erected a barrier between itself and the sanity of a practical, truth-loving people. Let us hope that this aberra tion is not permanent. When poetry returns to simplicity, sincerity, and truth; when it shall voice, as in the great English singers, Tennyson and Browning, the deepest thought and aspirations of our race ; when once more, as in the prophetic days of old, it shall resume its lofty, seer-like office, — then will it be restored to its place of honor by a delighted and grateful people.

CHAPTER II

EDGAR ALLAN POE

POE occupies a peculiar place in American literature. He has been called our most interest ing literary man. He stands alone for his intellec tual brilliancy and his lamentable failure to use it wisely. No one can read his works intelligently without being impressed with his extraordinary ability. Whether poetry, criticism, or fiction, he shows extraordinary power in them all. But the moral element in life is the most important, and in this Poe was lacking. With him truth was not the first necessity. He allowed his judgment to be warped by friendship, and apparently sacrificed sin cerity to the vulgar desire of gaining popular ap plause. Through intemperate habits, he was unable for any considerable length of time to maintain him self in a responsible or lucrative position. Fortune repeatedly opened to him an inviting door ; but he constantly and ruthlessly abused her kindness.

Edgar Allan Poe descended from an honorable ancestry. His grandfather, David Poe, was a Revolutionary hero, over whose grave, as he kissed the sod, Lafayette pronounced the words, "Id repose tin cceur noble" His father, an impulsive and wayward youth, fell in love with an English

29

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

EDGAR ALLAN POE 31

actress, and forsook the bar for the stage. The couple were duly married, and acted with moder ate success in the principal towns and cities of the country. It was during an engagement at Boston that the future poet was born, January 19, 1809. Two years later the wandering pair were again in Richmond, where within a few weeks of each other they died in poverty. They left three children, the second of whom, Edgar, was kindly received into the home of Mr. John Allan, a wealthy merchant of the city.

The early training of Poe was misguided and unfortunate. The boy was remarkably pretty and precocious, and his foster-parents allowed no opportunity to pass without showing him off. After dinner in this elegant and hospitable home, he was frequently placed upon the table to drink to the health of the guests, and to deliver short declamations, for which he had inherited a decided talent. He was flattered and fondled and indulged in every way. Is it strange that under this train ing he acquired a taste for strong drink, and became opinionated and perverse ?

In 1815 Mr. Allan went to England with his family to spend several years, and there placed the young Edgar at school in an ancient and his toric town, which has since been swallowed up in the overflow of the great metropolis. The vener able appearance and associations of the town, as may be learned from the autobiographic tale of William Wilson, made a deep and lasting impres sion on the imaginative boy.

32 POETS OF THE SOUTH

After five years spent in this English school, where he learned to read Latin and to speak French, he was brought back to America, and placed in a Richmond academy. Without much diligence in study, his brilliancy enabled him to take high rank in his classes. His skill in verse- making and in debate made him prominent in the school. He excelled in athletic exercises, but was not generally popular among his fellow-students. Conscious of his superior intellectual endow ments, he was disposed to live apart and in dulge in moody reverie. According to the testimony of one who knew him well at this time, he was " self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, or even amiable."

In 1826, at the age of seventeen, Poe matricu lated at the University of Virginia, and entered the schools of ancient and modern languages. Though he attended his classes with a fair degree of regu larity, he was not slow in joining the fast set. Gambling seems to have become a passion with him, and he lost heavily. His reckless expendi tures led Mr. Allan to visit Charlottesville for the purpose of inquiring into his habits. The result appears not to have been satisfactory ; and though his adopted son won high honors in Latin and French, Mr. Allan refused to allow him to return to the university after the close of his first session, ind placed him in his own counting-room.

It is not difficult to foresee the next step in the drama before us. Many a genius of far greater

EDGAR ALLAN POE 33

self -restraint and moral earnestness has found the routine of business almost intolerably irksome. With high notions of his own ability, and with a temper rebellious to all restraint, Poe soon broke away from his new duties, and started out to seek his fortune. He went to Boston ; and, in eager search for fame and money, he resorted to the rather unpromising expedient of publishing, in 1827, a small volume of poems. Viewed in the light of his subsequent career, the volume gives here and there an intimation of the author's genius ; but, as was to be expected, it attracted but little attention. He was soon reduced to financial straits, and in his pressing need he enlisted, under an assumed name, in the United States army. He served at Fort Moultrie, and after ward at Fortress Monroe. He rose to the rank of sergeant major ; and, according to the testimony of his superiors, he was " exemplary in his deport ment, prompt and faithful in the discharge of his duties."

In 1829, when his heart was softened by the death of his wife, Mr. Allan became reconciled to his adopted but wayward son. Through his influence, young Poe secured a discharge from the army, and obtained an appointment as cadet at West Point. He entered the military academy July I, 1830, and, as usual, established a reputation for brilliancy and folly. He was reserved, exclu sive, discontented, and censorious. As described by a classmate, " He was an accomplished French scholar, and had a wonderful aptitude for mathe-

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 5

34 POETS OF THE SOUTH

matics, so that he had no difficulty in preparing his recitations in his class, and in obtaining the highest marks in these departments. He was a devourer of books ; but his great fault was his neglect of and apparent contempt for military duties. His wayward and capricious temper made him at times utterly oblivious or indifferent to the ordinary routine of roll call, drills, and guard duties. These habits subjected him often to arrest and punishment, and effectually prevented his learn ing or discharging the duties of a soldier." The final result may be easily anticipated : at the end' of six months, he was summoned before a court- martial, tried, and expelled.

Before leaving West Point, Poe arranged for the publication of a volume of poetry, which appeared in New York in 1831. This volume, to which the students of the academy subscribed liberally in ad vance, is noteworthy in several particulars. In a prefatory letter Poe lays down the poetic principle to which he endeavored to conform his" productions. It throws much light on his poetry by exhibiting the ideal at which he aimed. " A poem, in my opinion," he says, "is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object pleasure, not truth ; to romance, by having for its object an in definite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained ; romance pre senting perceptible images with definite, poetry with /^definite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when

EDGAR ALLAN POE 35

combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry ; music without the idea is simply music ; the idea without the music is prose from its very denniteness." Music embodied in a golden mist of thought and sentiment — this is Poe's poetic ideal.

As illustrative of his musical rhythm, the follow ing lines from A I Aaraaf may be given : —

" Ligeia ! Ligeia !

My beautiful one ! Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run, O ! is it thy will

On the breezes to toss ? Or, capriciously still,

Like the lone Albatross. Incumbent on night

(As she on the air) To keep watch with delight

On the harmony there ? "

Or take the last stanza of Ismfel : —

" If I could dwell Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky."

The two principal poems in the volume under consideration — A I Aaraaf and Tamerlane — are obvious imitations of Moore and Byron. The

36 POETS OF THE SOUTH

beginning of Al Aaraaf, for example, might easily be mistaken for an extract from Lalla Rookh, so similar are the rhythm and rhyme : —

" O ! nothing earthly save the ray (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye, As in those gardens where the day Springs from the gems of Circassy — O ! nothing earthly save the thrill Of melody in woodland rill — Or (music of the passion-hearted) Joy's voice so peacefully departed That, like the murmur in the shell, Its echo dwelleth and will dwell — Oh, nothing of the dross of ours — Yet all the beauty — all the flowers That list our Love, and deck our bowers — Adorn yon world afar, afar — The wandering star."

After his expulsion from West Point, Poe appears to have gone to Richmond ; but the long-suffering of Mr. Allan, who had married again after the death of his first wife, was at length exhausted. He refused to extend any further recognition to one whom he had too much reason to regard as unappreciative and undeserv ing. Accordingly Poe was thrown upon his own resources for a livelihood. He settled in Balti more, where he had a few acquaintances and friends, and entered upon that literary career which is without parallel in American literature for its achievements, its vicissitudes, and its sorrows. With no qualification for the struggle of life other

EDGAR" ALLAN POE 37

than intellectual brilliancy, he bitterly atoned, through disappointment and suffering, for his de fects of temper, lack of judgment, and habits of intemperance.

In 1833 the Baltimore Saturday Visitor offered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best prose story. This prize Poe won by his tale, A Ms. Found in a Bottle. This success may be re garded as the first step in his literary career. The ability displayed in this fantastic tale brought him to the notice of John P. Kennedy, Esq., who at once befriended him in his distress, and aided him in his literary projects. He gave Poe, whom he found in extreme poverty, free access to his home and, to use his own words, " brought him up from the very verge of despair."

After a year or more of hack work in Baltimore, Poe, through the influence of his kindly patron, obtained employment on the SoutJiern Literary Messenger, and removed to Richmond in 1835. Here he made a brilliant start ; life seemed to open before him full of promise. In a short time he was promoted to the editorship of the Messenger, and by his tales, poems, and especially his reviews, he made that periodical very popular. In a twelve-month he increased its subscription list from seven hundred to nearly five thousand, and made the magazine a rival of the Knicker bocker and the New Englander. He was loudly praised by the Southern press, and was gener ally regarded as one of the foremost writers of the day.

38 POETS OF THE SOUTH

In the Messenger Poe began his work as a critic. It is hardly necessary to say that his criticism was of the slashing kind. He became little short of a terror. With a great deal of critical acumen and a fine artistic sense, he made relentless war on pretentious mediocrity, and rendered good service to American letters by enforcing higher literary standards. He was lavish in his charges of pla giarism ; and he made use of cheap, second-hand learning in order to ridicule the pretended scholar ship of others. He often affected an irritating and contemptuous superiority. But with all his humbug and superciliousness, his critical estimates, in the main, have been sustained.

The bright prospects before Poe were in a few months ruthlessly blighted. Perhaps he relied too much on his genius and reputation. It is easy for men of ability to overrate their importance. Regarding himself, perhaps, as indispensable to the Messenger, he may have relaxed in vigilant self-restraint. It has been claimed that he resigned the editorship in order to accept a more lucrative offer in New York ; but the sad truth seems to be that he was dismissed on account of his irregular habits.

After eighteen months in Richmond, during which he had established a brilliant literary repu^ tation, Poe was again turned adrift. He went to New York, where his story, The Adventures of ArtJmr Gordon Pym, was published by the Harpers in 1838. It is a tale of the sea, written with the simplicity of style and circumstantiality of detail

EDGAR ALLAN POE 39

that give such charm to the works of Defoe. In spite of the fact that Cooper and Marryat had created a taste for sea-tales, this story never be came popular. It is superabundant in horrors — a vein that had a fatal fascination for the morbid genius of Poe.

The same year in which this story appeared, Poe removed to Philadelphia, where he soon found work on the Gentleman s Magazine, recently estab lished by the comedian Burton. He soon rose to the position of editor-in-chief, and his talents proved of great value to the magazine. His tales and cri tiques rapidly increased its circulation. But the actor, whose love of justice does him great credit, could not approve of his editor's sensational criti cism. In a letter written when their cordial rela tions were interrupted for a time, Burton speaks very plainly and positively : " I cannot permit the magazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of severity which you think is so ' successful with the mob.' I am truly much less anxious about making a monthly ' sensation ' than I am upon the point of fairness. . . . You say the people love havoc. I think they love justice." Poe did not profit by his experience at Richmond, and after a few months he was dismissed for neglect of duty.

He was out of employment but a short time. In November, 1840, Graham* s Magazine was estab lished, and Poe appointed editor. At no other period of his life did his genius appear to better advantage. Thrilling stories and trenchant criti cisms followed one another in rapid succession.

4O POETS OF THE SOUTH

His articles on autography and cryptology attracted widespread attention. In the former he attempted to illustrate character by the handwriting ; and in the latter he maintained that human ingenuity can not invent a cipher that human ingenuity cannot resolve. In the course of a few months the cir culation of the magazine (if its own statements may be trusted) increased from eight thousand to forty thousand — a remarkable circulation for that time.

His criticism was based on the rather violent assumption "that, as a literary people, we are one vast perambulating humbug." In most cases, he asserted, literary prominence was achieved " by the sole means of a blustering arrogance, or of a busy wriggling conceit, or of the most bare-faced pla giarism, or even through the simple immensity of its assumptions." These fraudulent reputations he undertook, "with the help of a hearty good will" (which no one will doubt) "to tumble down." He admitted that there were a few who rose above absolute " idiocy." " Mr. Bryant is not all a fool. Mr. Willis is not quite an ass. Mr. Longfellow will steal but, perhaps, he cannot help it (for we have heard of such things), and then it must not be denied that nil tetigit quod non ornavit" But, in spite of such reckless and extravagant assertion, there was still too much acumen and force in his reviews for them to be treated with indifference or contempt.

In about eighteen months Poe's connection with Graham was dissolved. The reason has not been

EDGAR ALLAN POE 41

made perfectly clear ; but from what we already know, it is safe to charge it to Poe's infirmity ot temper or of habit. His protracted sojourn in Philadelphia was now drawing to a close. It had been the most richly productive, as well as the happiest, period of his life. For a time, sustained by appreciation and hope, he in a measure over came his intemperate habits. Griswold, his much- abused biographer, has given us an interesting description of him and his home at this time : " His manner, except during his fits of intoxica tion, was very quiet and gentlemanly ; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance ; and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was im pressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the center of the town ; and, though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed al together suitable for a man of genius."

It was during his residence in Philadelphia that Poe wrote his choicest stories. Among the master pieces of this period are to be mentioned The Fall of tJie House of Usher, Ligeia, which he regarded as his best tale The Descent into the Maelstrom, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mystery of Marie Roget. The general character of his tales may be inferred from their titles. Poe delighted in the weird, fantastic,

42 POETS OF THE SOUTH

dismal, horrible. There is no warmth of human sympathy, no moral consciousness, no lessons of practical wisdom. His tales are the product of a morbid but powerful imagination. His style is in perfect keeping with his peculiar gifts. He had a highly developed artistic sense. By his air of perfect candor, his minuteness of detail, and his power of graphic description, he gains complete mastery over the soul, and leads us almost to believe the impossible. Within the limited range of his imagination (for he was by no means the universal genius he fancied himself to be) he is unsurpassed, perhaps, by any other American writer.

Poe's career had now reached its climax, and after a time began its rapid descent. In 1844 he moved to New York, where for a year or two his life did not differ materially from what it had been in Philadelphia. He continued to write his fantas tic tales, for which he was poorly paid, and to do editorial work, by which he eked out a scanty live lihood. He was employed by N. P. Willis for a few months on the Evening Mirror as sub-editor and critic, and was regularly " at his desk from nine in the morning till the paper went to press."

It was in this paper, January 29, 1845, that his greatest poem, The Raven, was published with a flattering commendation by Willis. It laid hold of the popular fancy ; and, copied throughout the length and breadth of the land, it met a reception never before accorded to an American poem. Abroad its success was scarcely less remarkable

EDGAR ALLAN POE 43

and decisive. "This vivid writing," wrote Mrs. Browning, " this power which is felt, has produced a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons who are haunted by the ' Never more ' ; and an acquaintance of mine, who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas, cannot bear to look at it in the twilight."

In 1845 P°e was associated with the management of the Broadway Journal, which in a few months passed entirely into his hands. He had long de sired to control a periodical of his own, and in Phila delphia had tried to establish a magazine. But, however brilliant as an editor, he was not a man of administrative ability ; and in three months he was forced to suspend publication for want of means. Shortly afterward he published in Godey's Lady's Book a series of critical papers entitled Literati of New York. The papers, usually brief, are gossipy, interesting, sensational, with an occa sional lapse into contemptuous and exasperating severity.

In the same year he published a tolerably com plete edition of his poems in the revised form in which they now appear in his works. The volume contained nearly all the poems upon which his poetic fame justly rests. Among those that may be regarded as embodying his highest poetic achievement are The Raven, Lenore, Ulalume, The Bells, Annabel Lee, The Haunted Palace, TJie Conqueror Worm, The City in the Sea, Eulalie, and Israfel. Rarely

44 POETS OF THE SOUTH

has so large a fame rested on so small a number of poems, and rested so securely. His range of themes, it will be noticed, is very narrow. As in his tales, he dwells in a weird, fantastic, or deso late region — usually under the shadow of death. He conjures up unearthly landscapes as a setting for his gloomy and morbid fancies. In The City in the Sea, for example : —

" There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not 1 ) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot, Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie."

He conformed his poetic efforts to his theory that a poem should be short. He maintained that the phrase " ' a long poem ' is simply a flat contra diction in terms." His strong artistic sense gave him a firm mastery over form. He constantly uses alliteration, assonance, repetition, and refrain. These artifices form an essential part of The Raven, Lenore, and The Bells. In his poems, as in his tales, Poe was less anxious to set forth an experience or a truth than to make an im pression. His poetry aims at beauty in a purely artistic sense, unassociated with truth or morals. It is, for the most part, singularly vague, unsub stantial, and melodious. Some of his poems — and precisely those in which his genius finds its highest expression — defy complete analysis. Ulalume, for instance, remains obscure after the twentieth

EDGAR ALLAN POE 45

perusal — its meaning lost in a haze of mist and music. Yet these poems, when read in a sympa thetic mood, never fail of their effect. They are genuine creations ; and, as a fitting expression of certain mental states, they possess an indescribable charm, something like the spell of the finest instru mental music. There is no mistaking Poe's poetic genius. Though not the greatest, he is still the most original, of our poets, and has fairly earned the high esteem ' in which his gifts are held in America and Europe.

During his stay in New York, Poe was often present in the literary gatherings of the metropolis. He was sometimes accompanied by his sweet, affec tionate, invalid wife, whom in her fourteenth year he had married in Richmond. According to Gris- wold, " His conversation was at times almost supra- mortal in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with astonishing skill ; and his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart." His writings are unstained by a single immoral sentiment.

Toward the latter part of his sojourn in New York, the hand of poverty and want pressed upon him sorely. The failing health of his wife, to whom his tender devotion is beyond all praise, was a source of deep and constant anxiety. For a time he became an object of charity — a humiliation that was exceedingly galling to his delicately sensitive

46 POETS OF THE SOUTH

nature. To a sympathetic friend, who lent her kindly aid in this time of need, we owe a graphic but pathetic picture of Poe's home shortly before the death of his almost angelic wife : '* There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, excepj as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet." She died January 30, 1847.

After this event Poe was never entirely himself again. The immediate effect of his bereavement was complete physical and mental prostration, from which he recovered only with difficulty. His sub sequent literary work deserves scarcely more than mere mention. His Eureka, an ambitious trea tise, the immortality of which he confidently pre dicted, was a disappointment and failure. He tried lecturing, but with only moderate success. His correspondence at this time reveals a broken, hysterical, hopeless man. In his weakness, lone liness, and sorrow, he resorted to stimulants with increasing frequency. Their terrible work was soon done. On his return from a visit to Rich mond, he stopped in Baltimore, where he died from the effects of drinking, October 7, 1849.

Thus ended the tragedy of his life. It is as

EDGAR ALLAN POE 47

depressing as one of his own morbid, fantastic tales. His career leaves a painful sense of incom pleteness and loss. With greater self-discipline, how much more he might have accomplished for himself and for others ! Gifted, self-willed, proud, passionate, with meager moral sense, he forfeited success by his perversity and his vices. From his own character and experience he drew -the un healthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression in the maddening poem, T/ie Conqueror Worm. And if there were not happier and nobler lives, we might well say with him, as we stand by his grave : —

" Out — out are the lights — out all !

And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy ' Man,'

And its hero the Conqueror Worm."

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

CHAPTER III

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

THE poetry of Paul Hamilton Hayne is charac terized by a singular delicacy of sentiment and expression. There is an utter absence of what is gross or commonplace. His poetry, as a whole, carries with it an atmosphere of high-bred refine ment. We recognize at once fineness of fiber and of culture. It could not well be otherwise ; for the poet traced the line of his ancestors to the cultured nobility of England, and, surrounded by wealth, was brought up in the home of Southern chivalry.

The aristocratic lineage of the Hayne family was not reflected in its political feelings and affili ations in this country. They were not Tories ; on the contrary, from the colonial days down to the Civil War they showed themselves stoutly democratic. The Haynes were, in a measure, to South Carolina what the Adamses and Quincys were to Massachusetts. A chivalrous uncle of the poet, Colonel Arthur P. Hayne, fought in three wars, and afterwards entered the United States Senate. Another uncle, Governor Robert Y. Hayne, was a distinguished statesman, who did

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 4 49

5<D POETS OF THE SOUTH

not fear to cross swords with Webster in the most famous debate, perhaps, of our national history. The poet's father was a lieutenant in the United States navy, and died at sea when his gifted son was still an infant. These patriotic antecedents were not without influence on the life and writings of the poet.

In the existing biographical sketches of Hayne we find little or no mention of his mother. This neglect is undeserved. She was a cultured woman of good English and Scotch ancestry. It was her hand that had the chief fashioning of the young poet's mind and heart. She transmitted to him his poetic temperament ; and when his muse began its earliest flights, she encouraged him with appre ciative words and ambitious hopes. Hayne's poems are full of autobiographic elements ; and in one, entitled To My Mot her , he says : —

" To thee my earliest verse I brought,

All wreathed in loves and roses, Some glowing boyish fancy, fraught

With tender May-wind closes ; Thou didst not taunt my fledgling song,

Nor view its flight with scorning : ' The bird,' thou saidst, 'grown fleet and strong,

Might yet outsoar the morning ! ' '

Paul Hamilton Hayne was born in Charleston, South Carolina, January I, 1830. At that time Charleston was the literary center of the South. Among its wealthy and aristocratic circles there was a literary group of unusual gifts. Calhoun

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 51

and Legare were there ; and William Gilmore Simms, a man of great versatility, gathered about him a congenial literary circle, in which we find Hayne and his scarcely less distinguished friend, Henry Timrod.

Hayne was graduated with distinction from Charleston College in 1850, receiving a prize for superiority in English composition and elocution. He then studied law ; but, like many other authors both North and South, the love of letters proved too strong for the practice of his profession. His literary bent, as with most of our gifted authors, manifested itself early, and even in his college days he became a devotee of the poetic muse. The ardor of his devotion found expression in one of his early poems, first called Aspirations, but in his later works appearing under the title of The Will and the Wing:-

" Yet would I rather in the outward state

Of Song's immortal temple lay me down, A beggar basking by that radiant gate,

Than bend beneath the haughtiest empire's crown.

" For sometimes, through the bars, my ravished eyes

Have caught brief glimpses of a life divine, And seen a far, mysterious rapture rise

Beyond the veil that guards the inmost shrine."

Hayne served his literary apprenticeship in con nection with several periodicals. He was a favor ite contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger, for many years published in Richmond, Virginia,

52 POETS OF THE SOUTH

and deservedly ranking as the best monthly issued in the South before the Civil War. He was one of the editors of. the Southern Literary Gazette, a weekly published in his native city. Afterwards, as a result of a plan devised at one of Simms's literary dinners, Russell's Magazine, with Hayne as editor, was established, to use the language of the first number, as " another depository for Southern genius, and a new incentive, as we hope, for its active exercise." It was a monthly of high excellence for the time ; but for lack of adequate support it suspended publication after an honor able career of two years.

An article in Russell's Magazine for August, 1857, elaborately discusses the ante-bellum dis couragements to authorship in the South. Indif ference, ignorance, and prejudice, the article asserted, were encountered on every hand. " It may happen to be only a volume of noble poetry, full of those universal thoughts and feelings which speak, not to a particular people, but to all mankind. It is censured, at the South, as not sufficiently Southern in spirit, while at the North it is pronounced a very fair specimen of South ern commonplace. Both North and South agree with one mind to condemn the author and forget his book."

Hayne's critical work as editor of Russell's Magazine is worthy of note. In manly inde pendence of judgment, though not in ferocity of style, he resembled Poe. He prided himself on con scientious loyalty to literary art. He disclaimed

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 53

all sympathy with that sectional spirit which has sometimes lauded a work merely for geographi cal reasons ; and in the critical reviews of his maga zine he did not hesitate to point out and censure crudeness in Southern writers. But, at the same time, it was a more pleasing task to his generous nature to recognize and praise artistic excellence wherever he found it.

As a critic Hayne was, perhaps, severest to himself. His poetic standards were high. In his maturer years he blamed the precipitancy with which, as a youth, he had rushed into print. There is an interesting marginal note, as his son tells us, in a copy of his first volume of verse, in which The Cataract is pronounced " the poorest piece in the volume. Boyish and bombastic ! Should have been whipped for publishing it ! " It is needless to say that the piece does not ap pear in his Complete Poems. This severity of self-criticism, which exacted sincerity of utter ance, has imparted a rare average excellence to his work.

In 1852 he married Miss Mary Middleton Michel, of Charleston, the daughter of a distin guished French physician. Rarely has a union been more happy. In the days of his prosperity she was an inspiration ; and in the long years of poverty and sickness that came later she was his comfort and stay. In his poem, TJie Bonny Brown Hand, there is a reflection of the love that glorified the toil and ills of this later period : —

54 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" Oh, drearily, how drearily, the sombre eve comes

down ! And wearily, how wearily, the seaboard breezes

blow ! But place your little hand in mine — so dainty, yet so

brown !

For household toil hath worn away its rosy-tinted snow ;

But I fold it, wife, the nearer, And I feel, my love, 'tis dearer Than all dear things of earth, As I watch the pensive gloaming, And my wild thoughts cease from roaming, And birdlike furl their pinions close beside our peace ful hearth ; Then rest your little hand in mine, while twilight

shimmers down, That little hand, that fervent hand, that hand of

bonny brown —

The hand that holds an honest heart, and rules a happy hearth. "

Two small volumes of Hayne's poetry appeared before the Civil War from the press of Ticknor & Co., Boston. They were made up chiefly of pieces contributed to the SoutJiern Literary Messenger, Russselfs Magazine, and other periodicals in the South. The first volume appeared in 1855, and the second in 1859. These volumes were well worthy of the favorable reception they met with, and encouraged the poet to dedicate himself more fully to his art. In the fullness of this dedica tion, he reminds us of Longfellow, Tennyson,

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 55

and Wordsworth, all of whom he admired and loved.

Few first volumes of greater excellence have ever appeared in this country. The judicious critic was at once able to recognize the presence of a genuine singer. The poet rises above the obvious imitation that was a common vice among Southern singers before the Civil War. We may indeed perceive the influence of Tennyson in the delicacy of the craftsmanship, and the influence of Wordsworth in the deep and sympathetic treat ment of Nature ; but Hayne's study of these great bards had been transmuted into poetic culture, and is reflected only in the superior quality of his work. There is no case of conscious or obvious imitation.

The volume of 1859, which bears the title Avolio and Other Poems, exhibits the poet's fondness for the sonnet and his admirable skill in its use. Throughout his subsequent poetical career, he fre quently chose the sonnet as the medium for ex pressing his choicest thought. It is hardly too much to claim that Hayne is the prince of Ameri can sonneteers. The late Maurice Thompson said that he could pick out twenty of Hayne's sonnets equal to almost any others in our lan guage. In the following sonnet, which is quoted by way of illustration, the poet gives us the key to a large part of his work. He was a wor shiper of beauty ; and the singleness of this devo tion gives him his distinctive place in our poetic annals.

56 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" Pent in this common sphere of sensual shows, I pine for beauty ; beauty of fresh mien, And gentle utterance, and the charm serene, Wherewith the hue of mystic dreamland glows ; I pine for lulling music, the repose

Of low-voiced waters, in some realm between The perfect Adenne, and this clouded scene Of love's sad loss, and passion's mournful throes ; A pleasant country, girt with twilight calm,

In whose fair heaven a moon of shadowy round

Wades through a fading fall of sunset rain ; Where drooping lotos-flowers, distilling balm,

Gleam by the drowsy streamlets sleep hath crown 'd, While Care forgets to sigh, and Peace hath bal- samed pain."

The great civil conflict of '6i-'65 naturally stirred the poet's heart He was a patriotic son of the South. On the breaking out of hostilities, he became a member of Governor Pickens's staff, and was stationed for a time in Fort Sumter ; but after a brief service he was forced to resign on account of failing health. His principal service to the Southern cause was rendered in his martial songs, which breathe a lofty, patriotic spirit. They are remarkable at once for their dignity of manner and refinement of utterance. There is an entire absence of the fierceness that is to be found in some of Whittier's and Timrod's sectional lyrics. Hayne lacked the fierce energy of a great re former or partisan leader. But nowhere else do we find a heart more sensitive to grandeur of achievement or pathos of incident. He recognized

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 57

the unsurpassed heroism of sentiment and achieve ment displayed in the war ; and in an admirable sonnet, he exclaims : —

" Ah, foolish souls and false ! who loudly cried * True chivalry no longer breathes in time.' Look round us now ; how wondrous, how sublime The heroic lives we witness ; far and wide Stern vows by sterner deeds are justified ; Self-abnegation, calmness, courage, power, Sway, with a rule august, our stormy hour, Wherein the loftiest hearts have wrought and died — Wrought grandly, and died smiling. Thus, O God, From tears, and blood, and anguish, thou hast

brought

The ennobling act, the faith-sustaining thought — Till, in the marvelous present, one may see A mighty stage, by knights and patriots trod, Who had not shunned earth's haughtiest chivalry."

The war brought the poet disaster. His beau tiful home and the library he has celebrated in a noble sonnet were destroyed in the bombardment of Charleston. The family silver, which had been stored in Columbia for safe-keeping, was lost in Sherman's famous " march to the sea." His native state was in desolation ; his friends, warm and true with the fidelity which a common disaster brings, were generally as destitute and helpless as himself. Under these disheartening circum stances, rendered still more gloomy by the ruthless deeds of reconstruction, he withdrew to the pine barrens of Georgia, where, eighteen miles from

$8 POETS OF THE SOUTH

Augusta, he built a very plain and humble cottage. He christened it Copse Hill ; and it was here, on a desk fashioned out of a workbench left by the carpenters, that many of his choicest pieces, re flecting credit on American letters, and earning for him a high place among American poets, were written.

This modest home, which from its steep hill side —

" Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow," —

the poet has commemorated in a sonnet, which gives us a glimpse of the quiet, rural scenes that were dear to his heart : —

" Here, far from worldly strife, and pompous show, The peaceful seasons glide serenely by, Fulfill their missions, and as calmly die,

As waves on quiet shores when winds are low.

Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay leaves, clouds fantastical

That float and change at the light breeze's will, — To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall."

His son, Mr. W. H. Hayne, has thrown an in teresting light upon the poet's methods of compo sition. Physical movement seemed favorable to his poetic faculty ; and many of his pieces were composed as he paced to and fro in his study, o/ walked with stooping shoulders beneath the trees

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 59

surrounding Copse Hill. He was not mechanical or systematic in his poetic work, but followed the impulse of inspiration. " The poetic impulse," his son tells us, " frequently came to him so sponta neously as to demand immediate utterance, and he would turn to the fly leaf of the book in hand or on a neighboring shelf, and his pencil would soon record the lines, or fragments of lines, that claimed release from his brain. The labor of revision usually followed, — sometimes promptly, but not infrequently after the fervor of conception had passed away." The painstaking care with, which the revising was done is revealed in the artistic finish of almost every poem.

Hayne's life at this time was truly heroic. With uncomplaining fortitude he met the hardships of poverty and bore the increasing ills of failing health. He never lost hope and courage. He lived the poetry that he sang : —

" Still smiles the brave soul, undivorced from hope ; And, with unwavering eye and warrior mien, Walks in the shadow dauntless and serene, To test, through hostile years, the utmost scope Of man's endurance — constant to essay All heights of patience free to feet of clay."

And in the end he was not disappointed. Grad ually his genius gained general recognition. The leading magazines of the country were opened to him ; and, as Stedman remarks, " his people regarded him with a tenderness which, if a com-

6O POETS OF THE SOUTH

mensurate largess had been added, would have made him feel less solitary among his pines."

In 1872 a volume of Legends and Lyrics was issued by Lippincott & Co. It shows the poet's genius in the full power of maturity. His legends are admirably told, and Aethra is a gem of its kind. But the richness of Hayne's imagination was better suited to lyric than to narrative or dra matic poetry. The latter, indeed, abounds in rare beauty of thought and expression ; but somehow this luxuriance seems to retard or obscure the move ment. The lyric pieces of this volume are full ot self-revelation, autobiography, and Southern land scape. Hayne was not an apostle of the strenuous life ; he preferred to dream among the beauties or sublimities of Nature. Thus, in Dolce far Niente, he says : —

" Let the world roll blindly on ! Give me shadow, give me sun, And a perfumed eve as this is :

Let me lie

Dreamfully,

Where the last quick sunbeams shiver Spears of light athwart the river, And a breeze, which seems the sigh Of a fairy floating by,

Coyly kisses

Tender leaf and feathered grasses ; Yet so soft its breathing passes, These tall ferns, just glimmering o'er me, Blending goldenly before me,

Hardly quiver ! "

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 6 1

The well-known friendship existing between Hayne and his brother poet Timrod was a beautiful one. As schoolboys they had encouraged each other in poetic efforts. As editor of Russell's Magazine, Hayne had welcomed and praised Tim- rod's contributions. For the edition of Timrod's poems published in 1873, Hayne prepared a gen erous and beautiful memoir, in which he quoted the opinion of some Northern writers who assigned the highest place to his friend among the poets of the South. In the Legends and Lyrics there is a fine poem, Under the Pine, commemorative of Timrod's visit to Copse Hill shortly before his death: —

" O Tree ! against thy mighty trunk he laid

His weary head ; thy shade Stole o'er him like the first cool spell of sleep :

It brought a peace so deep, The unquiet passion died from out his eyes,

As lightnings from stilled skies.

" And in that calm he loved to rest, and hear

The soft wind-angels, clear And sweet, among the uppermost branches sighing :

Voices he heard replying (Or so he dreamed) far up the mystic height, And pinions rustling light."

As illustrating his rich fancy and graphic power of diction, a few stanzas are given from Cloud Pictures. They are not unworthy of Tennyson in his happiest moments.

62 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" At Calm length I lie

Fronting the broad blue spaces of the sky, Covered with cloud-groups, softly journeying by :

" An hundred shapes, fantastic, beauteous, strange, Are theirs, as o'er yon airy waves they range At the wind's will, from marvelous change to change :

" Castles, with guarded roof, and turret tall, Great sloping archway, and majestic wall, Sapped by the breezes to their noiseless fall !

" Pagodas vague ! above whose towers outstream Banners that wave with motions of a dream — Rising or drooping in the noontide gleam ;

" Gray lines of Orient pilgrims : a gaunt band On famished camels, o'er the desert sand Plodding towards their prophet's Holy Land ;

" Mid-ocean, — and a shoal of whales at play, Lifting their monstrous frontlets to the day, Through rainbow arches of sun-smitten spray ;

" Followed by splintered icebergs, vast and lone, Set in swift currents of some arctic zone, Like fragments of a Titan world o'erthrown."

In 1882 a complete edition of Hayne's poems was published by D. Lothrop & Co. Except a few poems written after that date and still uncol- lected, this edition contains his later productions, in which we discover an increasing seriousness, richness, and depth. The general range of sub jects, as in his earlier volumes, is limited to his

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 63

Southern environment and individual experience. This limitation is the severest charge that can be brought against his poetry, but, at the same time, it is an evidence of his sincerity and truth. He did not aspire, as did some of his great Northern contemporaries, to the office of moralist, philoso pher, or reformer. He was content to dwell in the quiet realm of beauty as it appears, to use the words of Margaret J. Preston, in the " aromatic freshness of the woods, the swaying incense of the cathedral-like isles of pines, the sough of dying summer winds, the glint of lonely pools, and the brooding notes of leaf-hidden mocking-birds." But the beauty and pathos of human life were not forgotten ; and now and then he touched upon the great spiritual truths on which the splendid heroism of his life was built. For delicacy of feel ing and perfection of form, his meditative and religious poems deserve to rank among the best in our language. They contain what is so often lacking in poetry of this class, genuine poetic feel ing and artistic expression.

The steps of death approached gradually ; for, like two other great poets of the South, Timrod and Lanier, he was not physically strong. Though sustained through his declining years by " the ulti mate trust "

" That love and mercy, Father, still are thine," —

he felt a pathetic desire to linger awhile in the love of his tender, patient, helpful wife : —

64 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" A little while I fain would linger here ;

Behold ! who knows what soul-dividing bars Earth's faithful loves may part in other stars ? Nor can love deem the face of death is fair : A little while I still would linger here."

Paul Hamilton Hayne passed away July 6, 1886. As already brought out in the course of this sketch, he was not only a gifted singer, but also a noble man. His extraordinary poetic gifts have not yet been fully recognized. Less gifted singers have been placed above him. No biography has been written to record with fond minuteness the story of his admirable life and achievement. His writ ings in prose, and a few of his choicest lyrics, still re main unpublished. Let us hope that this reproach to Southern letters may soon be removed, and that this laureate of the South may yet come to the full inheritance of fame to which the children of genius are inalienably entitled.

CHAPTER IV

HENRY TIMROD

IN some respects there is a striking similarity in the lives of the three Southern poets, Hayne, Timrod, and Lanier. They were alike victims of misfortune, and in their greatest tribulations they exhibited the same heroic patience and fortitude.

" They knew alike what suffering starts

From fettering need and ceaseless pain ; But still with brave and cheerful hearts, Whose message hope and joy imparts, They sang their deathless strain."

The fate of Timrod was the saddest of them all. Gifted with uncommon genius, he never saw its full fruitage ; and over and over again, when some precious hope seemed about to be realized, it was cruelly dashed to the ground. There is, perhaps, no sadder story in the annals of literature.

Henry Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina, December 28, 1829. He was older than his friend Hayne by twenty-three days. The law of heredity seems to find exemplification in his gen ius. The Timrods, a family of German descent, were long identified ' with the history of South

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 5 65

HENRY TIM ROD.

HENRY TIMROD 6/

Carolina. The poet's grandfather belonged to the German Fusiliers of Charleston, a volunteer com pany organized in 1775, after the battle of Lexing ton, for the defense of the American colonies. In the Seminole War, the poet's father, Captain William Henry Timrod, commanded the German Fusiliers in Florida. He was a gifted man, whose talents attracted an admiring circle of friends. " By the simple mastery of genius," says Hayne, "he gained no trifling influence among the highest intellectual and social circles of a city noted at that period for aristocratic exclusiyeness."

Timrod's father was not only an eloquent talker, but also a poet. A strong intellect was associated with delicate feelings. He had the gift of musical utterance; and the following verses from his poem, To Time — the Old Traveler', were pronounced by Washington Irving equal to any lyric written by Tom Moore : —

" They slander thee, Old Traveler,

Who say that thy delight Is to scatter ruin far and wide,

In thy wantonness of might : For not a leaf that falleth

Before thy restless wings, But in thy flight, thou changest it

To a thousand brighter things. • '*•*•

" 'Tis true thy progress layeth

Full many a loved one low, And for the brave and beautiful

Thou hast caused our tears to flow \

68 POETS OF THE SOUTH

But always near the couch of death

Nor thou, nor we can stay ; And the breath of thy departing wings

Dries all our tears away 1 "

On his mother's side the poet was scarcely less fortunate in his parentage. She was as beautiful in form and face as in character. From her more than from his father the poet derived his love of Nature. She delighted in flowers and trees and stars ; she caught the glintings of the sunshine through the leaves ; she felt a thrill of joy at the music of singing birds and of murmuring waters. With admirable maternal tenderness she taught her children to discern and appreciate the lovely sights and sounds of nature.

Timrod received his early education in a Charles ton school, where he sat next to Hayne. He was an ambitious boy, insatiable in his desire for knowl edge ; at the same time, he was fond of outdoor sports, and enjoyed the respect and confidence of his companions. His poetic activity dates from this period. " I well remember," says Hayne, " the exultation with which he showed me one morning his earliest consecutive attempt at verse-making. Our down-East schoolmaster, however, could boast of no turn for sentiment, and having remarked us hobnobbing, meanly assaulted us in the rear, effec tually quenching for the time all aesthetic enthu siasm."

When sixteen or seventeen years of age he en tered the University of Georgia. He was cramped

HENRY TIMROD 69

for lack of means ; sickness interfered with his studies, and at length he was forced to leave the university without his degree. But his interrupted course was not in vain. His fondness for litera ture led him, not only to an intelligent study of Virgil, Horace, and Catullus, but also to an unusual acquaintance with the leading poets of England. His pen was not inactive, and some of his college verse, published over a fictitious signature in a Charleston paper, attracted local attention.

After leaving college Timrod returned to Charleston, and entered upon the study of law in the office of the Hon. J. L. Petigru. But the law was not adapted to his tastes and talents, and, like Hayne, he early abandoned it to devote him self to literature. He was timid and retiring in disposition. " His walk was quick and nervous," says Dr. J. Dickson Bruns, " with an energy in it that betokened decision of character, but ill sus tained by the stammering speech ; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart ; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive lis tener, though never a moody or uncongenial one."

He aspired to a college professorship, for which he made diligent preparation in the classics ; but in spite of his native abilities and excellent attain ments, he never secured this object of his ambition. Leaving Charleston, he became a tutor in private families ; but on holiday occasions he was accus-

7O POETS OF THE SOUTH

tomed to return to the city, where he was cordially welcomed by his friends. Among these was William Gilmore Simms, a sort of Maecenas to aspiring genius, who gathered about him the younger literary men of his acquaintance. At the little dinners he was accustomed to give, no one mani fested a keener enjoyment than Timrod, when, in the words of Hayne : —

" Around the social board

The impetuous flood tide poured Of curbless mirth, and keen sparkling jest Vanished like wine-foam on its golden crest."

During all these years of toil and waiting the poetic muse was not idle. Under the pseudonym "Aglaus," the name of a minor pastoral poet of Greece, he became a frequent and favorite con tributor to the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, Virginia. Later he became one of the principal contributors, both in prose and poetry, to Russell's Magazine in Charleston. It was in these periodicals that the foundation of his fame was laid.

Timrod's first volume of poetry, made up of pieces taken chiefly from these magazines, ap peared in 1860, from the press of Ticknor & Fields, Boston. It was Hayne's judgment that "a better first volume of the kind has seldom appeared any where." It contains most of the pieces found in subsequent editions of his works. Here and there, both North and South, a discerning critic recog-

HENRY TIMROD /I

nized in the poet " a lively, delicate fancy, and a graceful beauty of expression." But, upon the whole, the book attracted little attention — a fact that came to the poet as a deep disappointment. In the words of Dr. Brims, who was familiar with the circumstances of the poet, " success was to him a bitter need, for not his living merely, but his life was staked upon it."

When this volume appeared, Timrod was more than a poetic tyro. Apart from native inspira tion, in which he was surpassed by few of his contemporaries, he had reflected profoundly on his art, and nursed his genius on the masterpieces of English song. In addition to Shakespeare he had carefully pondered Milton, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. From Wordsworth especially he learned to appreciate the poetry of common things, and to discern the mystic presence of that spirit, —

" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."

Timrod, like Poe, formulated a theory of poetry which it is interesting to study, as it throws light on his own work. It reveals to us the ideal at which he aimed. In a famous essay Poe made beauty the sole realm and end of poetry. To Timrod be longs the credit of setting forth a larger and juster conception of the poetic art. To beauty he adds poiver and truth as legitimate sources of poetry. " I think," he says, "when we recall the many and

72 POETS OF THE SOUTH

varied sources of poetry, we must, perforce, con fess that it is wholly impossible to reduce them all to the simple element of beauty. Two other ele ments, at least, must be added, and these are power, when it is developed in some noble shape, and truth, whether abstract or not, when it affects the common heart of mankind."

Timrod regarded a poem as a work of art. He justly held that a poem should have "one purpose, and that the materials of which it is composed should be so selected and arranged as to help en force it." He distinguished between the moment of inspiration, " when the great thought strikes for the first time along the brain and flushes the cheek with the sudden revelation of beauty or grandeur, and the hour of patient, elaborate execution." Ac cordingly he quoted with approval the lines of Matthew Arnold : —

" We cannot kindle when we will

The fire that in the heart resides ; The spirit bloweth and is still ; In mystery our soul abides ; But tasks in hours of insight willed, May be through hours of gloom fulfilled."

Timrod's poetry is characterized by clearness, simplicity, and force. He was not a mystic ; his thoughts and emotions are not obscured in voluble melody. To Jiim poetry is more than rhythmic har mony. Beneath his delicate imagery and rhyth mical sweetness are poured treasures of thought and truth. In diction he belongs to the school of

HENRY TIMROD 73

Wordsworth ; his language is not strained or far fetched, but such as is natural to cultured men in a state of emotion. " Poetry," he says in an early volume of Russell 's Magazine, " does not deal in abstractions. However abstract be his thought, the poet is compelled, by his passion-fused imagi nation, to give it life, form, or color. Hence the necessity of employing the sensuous or concrete words of the language, and hence the exclusion of long words, which in English • are nearly all purely and austerely abstract, from the poetic vocabulary."

He defends the use of the sonnet, in which, like Hayne, he excelled. He admits that the sonnet is artificial in structure ; but, as already pointed out, he distinguishes the moment of inspiration, from the subsequent labor of composition. In the act of writing, the poet passes into the artist. And " the very restriction so much complained of in the sonnet," he says, " the artist knows to be an advan tage. It forces him to condensation." His sonnets are characterized by a rare lucidity of thought and expression.

The principal piece in Timrod's first volume, to which we now return, and the longest poem he ever wrote, is entitled A Vision of Poesy. In the experience of the imaginative hero, who seems an idealized portrait of the poet himself, we find an almost unequaled presentation of the nature and uses of poetry. The spirit of Poesy, " the angel of the earth," thus explains her lofty mission : —

74 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" And ever since that immemorial hour

When the glad morning stars together sung. My task hath been, beneath a mightier Power, To keep the world forever fresh and young ; I give it not its fruitage and its green, But clothe it with a glory all unseen."

And what are the objects on which this angel of Poesy loves to dwell ? Truth, freedom, passion, she answers, and — -

" All lovely things, and gentle — the sweet laugh

Of children, girlhood's kiss, and friendship's clasp, The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp — All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless,

" To me are sacred ; at my holy shrine

Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints ; I turn life's tasteless waters into wine,

And flush them through and through with purple

tints.

Wherever earth is fair, and heaven looks down, I rear my altars, and I wear my crown."

Many of the poems in this first volume are worthy of note, as revealing some phase of the poet's ver satile gifts — delicate fancy, simplicity and truth, lucid force, or finished art. The Lily Confidante, is a light, lilting fancy, the moral of which is : —

" Love's the lover's only magic, Truth the very subtlest art ; Love that feigns, and lips that flatter, Win no modest heart."

HENRY TIMROD 75

The Past was first published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and afterwards went the rounds of the press. It teaches the important truth that we are the sum of all we have lived through. The past forms the atmosphere which we breathe to day ; it is —

" A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss,

Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss And nothing wholly perishes but grief.

" Ah me ! — not dies — no more than spirit dies ;

But in a change like death is clothed with wings ; A serious angel, with entranced eyes, Looking to far-off and celestial things."

Timrod possessed an ardent spirit that was stirred to its depths by the Civil War. His martial songs, with their fierce intensity, better voiced the feelings of the South at that time than those of Hayne or any other Southern singer. In his Ethnogenesis — • the birth of a nation — he cele brates in a lofty strain the rise of the Confed eracy, of which he cherished large and genero'us hopes : —

11 The type

Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas."

/ POETS OP THE SOUTH

But his most stirring lyrics are Carolina and A Cry to Arms, which in the exciting days of '61 deeply moved the Southern heart, but which to day serve as melancholy mementos of a long-past sectional bitterness. Of the vigorous lines of the former, Hayne says in an interesting autobio graphic touch, " I read them first, and was thrilled by their power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening in Fort Sumter ! Walking along the battlements, under the red lights of a tempestuous sunset, the wind steadily and loudly blowing from off the bar across the tossing and moaning waste of waters, driven inland ; with scores of gulls and white sea-birds flying and shrieking round me, — those wild voices of Nature mingled strangely with the rhythmic roll and beat of the poet's impassioned music. The very spirit, or dark genius, of the troubled scene appeared to take up, and to repeat such verses as : —

" ' I hear a murmur as of waves

That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves,

Carolina !

" * And now it deepens ; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon the strand,

Carolina ! ' "

These impassioned war lyrics brought the poet speedy popularity. For a time his hopes were lifted up to a roseate future. In 1862 some of

HENRY TIMROD 77

his influential friends formed the project of bring ing out a handsome edition of his poems in London. The war correspondent of the London Illustrated News, himself an artist, volunteered to furnish original illustrations. The scheme, at which the poet was elated, promised at once bread and fame. But, as in so many other instances, he was doomed to bitter disappointment. The increasing stress of the great conflict absorbed the energies of the South ; and the promising plan, notwithstanding the poet's popularity, was buried beneath the noise and tumult of battle.

Disqualified by feeble health from serving in the ranks, Timrod, shortly after the battle of Shiloh, went to Tennessee as the war correspondent of the Charleston Mercury. To his retiring and sympa thetic nature the scenes of war were painful. "One can scarcely conceive," says Dr. Bruns, "of a situation more hopelessly wretched than that of a mere child in the world's ways suddenly flung down into the heart of that strong retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those refluent waves, from which he escaped as by a miracle."

In 1863 he went to Columbia as associate edifor of the South Carolinian. He was scarcely less happy and vigorous in prose than in verse. A period of prosperity seemed at last to be dawning ; and, in the cheerful prospect, he ventured to marry Miss Kate Goodwin of Charleston, " Katie, the fair Saxon," whom he had long loved and of whom he had sung in one of his longest and sweetest poems. But his happiness was of brief duration.

78 POETS OF THE SOUTH

In a twelvemonth the army of General Sherman entered Columbia, demolished his office, and sent him adrift as a helpless fugitive.

The close of the war found him a ruined man ; he was almost destitute of property and broken in health. He was obliged to sell some of his house hold furniture to keep his family in bread. " We have," he says, in a sadly playful letter to Hayne at this period, " we have — let me see ! — yes, we have eaten two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, innumerable chairs, and a huge — bedstead! " He could find no paying market for his poems in the impoverished South ; and in the North political feeling was still too strong to give him access to the magazines there. The only employment he could find was some clerical work for a season in the governor's office, where he sometimes toiled far beyond his strength. In this time of discouragement and need, the gloom of which was never lifted, he pathetically wrote to Hayne : " I would consign every line of my verse to eternal oblivion for one hundred dollars in Iiand"

In 1867 his physicians recommended a change of air ; and accordingly he spent a month with his lifelong friend Hayne at Copse Hill. It was the one rift in the clouds before the fall of night. There is a pathetic beauty in the fellowship of the two poets during these brief weeks, when, with spirits often attuned to high thought and feeling, they roamed together among the pines or sat beneath the stars. " We would rest on the hillsides," says Hayne, " in the swaying golden shadows, watching

HENRY TIMROD 79

together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk in the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more 'charmed sleep.' Or we smoked, con versing lazily between the puffs, —

' Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped From out the crumbling bases of the sand.' "

Timrod survived but a few weeks after his return to Columbia. The circumstances of his death were most pathetic. Though sustained by Christian hopes, he still longed to live a season with the dear ones about him. When, after a period of intense agony that preceded his dissolution, his sister murmured to him, " You will soon be at rest now" he replied, with touching pathos, " Yes, my sister, but love is sivecter than rest." He died October 7, 1867, and was laid to rest in Trinity churchyard, where his grave long remained un marked.

Two principal editions of his works have been published: the first in 1873, with an admirable memoir by Hayne ; the second in 1899, under the auspices of the Timrod Memorial Association of South Carolina. A number of his poems and his prose writings still remain uncollected ; and there is yet no biography that fully records the story of his life. This fact is not a credit to Southern

8O POETS OF THE SOUTH

letters, for, as we have seen, Timrod was a poet of more than commonplace ability and achievement.

For the most part, his themes were drawn from the ordinary scenes and incidents of life. He was not ambitious of lofty subjects, remote from the hearts and homes of men. He placed sincerity above grandeur ; he preferred love to admiration. He was always pure, brave, and true ; and, as he sang : —

" The brightest stars are nearest to the earth, And we may track the mighty sun above, Even by the shadow of a slender flower. Always, O bard, humility is power ! And thou mayest draw from matters of the hearth Truths wide as nations, and as deep as love."

CHAPTER V

SIDNEY LANIER

LANIER'S genius was predominantly musical. He descended from a musical ancestry, which included in its line a " master of the king's music " at the court of James I. His musical gifts manifested themselves in early childhood. Without further instruction in music than a knowledge of the notes, which he learned from his mother, he was able to play, almost by intuition, the flute, guitar, violin, piano, and organ. He organized his boyish play mates into an amateur minstrel band ; and when in early manhood he began to confide his most intimate thoughts to a notebook, he wrote, " The prime inclination — that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though) — of my nature is to music, and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it me, I have an extraor dinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any composer."

This early bent and passion for music never left him. His thought continually turned to the subject of music, and in the silences of his soul he frequently heard wonderful melodies. In his novel, Tiger Lilies, he lauds music in a rapturous

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SIDNEY LANIER.

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strain : " Since in all holy worship, in all conditions of life, in all domestic, social, religious, political, and lonely individual doings ; in all passions, in all countries, earthly or heavenly ; in all stages of civ ilization, of time, or of eternity ; since, I say, in all these, music is always present to utter the shallowest or the deepest thoughts of man or spirit — let us cease to call music a fine art, to class it with delicate pastry cookery and confec tionery, and to fear to make too much of it lest it should make us sick." At a later period, while seeking to regain his health by a sojourn in Texas, he wrote to his wife : " All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody. The very inner spirit and essence of all wind-songs, bird-songs, passion- songs, folk-songs, country-songs, sex-songs, soul- songs, and body-songs, hath blown upon me in quick gusts like the breath of passion, and sailed me into a sea of vast dreams, whereof each wave is at once a vision and a melody."

This predominance of music in the genius of Lanier is at once the source of his strength and of his weakness in poetry. In his poems, and in his work entitled The Science of English Verse, it is the musical element of poetry upon which the principal emphasis is laid. This fact makes him the successor of Poe in American letters. Both in theory and in practice Lanier has, as we shall see, achieved admirable results. But, after all, the musical element of poetry is of minor importance.

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It is a means, and not an %end. No jingle of sound can replace the delicacy of fancy, nobleness of sentiment and energy of thought that constitute what we may call the soul of poetry. Rhapsody is not the highest form of poetic achievement. In its noblest forms poetry is the medium through which great souls, like Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, give to the world, with classic self-restraint, the fruitage of their highest thought and emotion.

The life of Lanier was a tragedy. While lighted here and there with a fleeting joy, its prevailing tone was one of sadness. The heroic courage with which he met disease and poverty impart to his life an inspiring gran'deur. He was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842. His sensitive spirit early responded to the beauties of Nature ; and in his hunting and fishing trips, in which he was usually accompanied by his younger brother Clif ford, he caught something of the varied beauties of marsh, wood, and sky, which were afterwards to be so admirably woven into his poems. He early showed a fondness for books, and in the well-stored shelves of his father's library he found ample oppor tunity to gratify his taste for reading. His literary tastes were doubtless formed on the old English classics — Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Addison — which formed a part of every Southern gentle man's library.

At the age of fifteen he entered the Sophomore class of Oglethorpe College, near Milledgeville, an institution that did not have sufficient vitality to

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survive the Civil War. He did not think very highly of the course of instruction, and found his chief delight, as perhaps the best part of his cul ture, in the congenial circle of friends he gathered around him. The evenings he spent with them were frequently devoted to literature and music. A classmate, Mr. T. F. Newell, gives us a vivid picture of these social features of his college life. " I can recall," he says, " my association with him with sweetest pleasure, especially those Attic nights, for they are among the dearest and tender- est recollections of my life, when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume, it may have been Tennyson, or Carlyle, or Christopher North's Nodes Ambrosiancz, or we would make the hours vocal with music and song ; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods, and which will be remem bered with no other regret than that they will never more return. On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute ex temporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony."

Lanier was a diligent student, and easily stood among the first of his classes, particularly in mathe matics. His reading took a wide range. In addi tion to the leading authors of the nineteenth century, he showed a fondness for what was old and quaint

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in our literature. He delighted in Burton's Anat omy of Melancholy and in the works of " the poet- preacher," Jeremy Taylor. At this time, too, his thoughtful nature turned to the serious problem of his life work. He eagerly questioned his capabili ties as preliminary, to use his own words, " to ascer taining God's will with reference to himself." As already learned from his notebook, he early rec ognized his extraordinary gifts in music. But his ambition aimed at more than a musician's career, for it seemed to him, as he said, that there were greater things that he might do.

His ability and scholarship made a favorable impression on the college authorities, and immedi ately after his graduation he was elected to a tutor ship. From this position, so congenial to his scholarly tastes, he was called, after six months, by the outbreak of the Civil War. In his boyhood he had shown a martial spirit. With his younger brother he joined the Macon Volunteers, and soon saw heavy service in Virginia. He took part in the battles of Seven Pines, Drewry's Bluffs, and Malvern Hill, in all of which he displayed a chival rous courage. Afterward he became a signal officer and scout. " Nearly two years," he says, in speak ing of this part of his service, " were passed in skirmishes, racing to escape the enemy's gunboats, signaling dispatches, serenading country beauties, poring over chance books, and foraging for proven der." In 1864 he became a blockade runner, and in his first run out from near Fort Fisher, he was captured and taken to Point Lookout prison.

SIDNEY LANIER 8/

It is remarkable that, amid the distractions and hardships of active service, his love of music and letters triumphantly asserted itself. His flute was his constant companion. He utilized the brief in tervals of repose that came to him in camp to set some of Tennyson's songs to music and to prose cute new lines of literary study. He took up the study of German, in which he became quite profi cient, and by the light of the camp fire at night translated from Heine, Schiller, and Goethe. At the same time his sympathy with the varied aspects of Nature was deepened. Trees and flowers and ferns revealed to him their mystic beauty ; and like Wordsworth, he found it easy, " in the lily, the sun set, the mountain, and rosy hues of all life, to trace God."

It was during his campaigns in Virginia that he began the composition of his only novel, Tiger Lilies ', which was not completed, however, till 1867. It is now out of print. Though immature and somewhat chaotic, it clearly reveals the im aginative temperament of the author. War is imaged to his mind as " a strange, enormous, ter rible flower," which he wishes might be eradicated forever and ever. As might be expected, music finds an honored place in its pages. He regards music as essential to the home. " Given the raw materials," he says, " to wit, wife, children, a friend or two, and a house, — two other things are neces sary. These are a good fire and good music. And inasmuch as we can do without the fire for half the year, I may say that music is the one essen-

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tial. After the evening spent around the piano, or the flute, or the violin, how warm and how chastened is the kiss with which the family all say good night ! Ah, the music has taken all the day cares and thrown them into its terrible alembic and boiled them and rocked them and cooled them, till they are crystallized into one care, which is a most sweet and rare desirable sorrow — the yearn ing for God."

After the war came a rude struggle for exist ence — a struggle in which tuberculosis, contracted during his camp life, gradually sapped his strength. Hemorrhages became not infrequent, and he was driven from one locality to another in a vain search for health. But he never lost hope ; and his sufferings served to bring out his indomitable, heroic spirit, and to stimulate him to the highest degree of intellectual activity. Few men have ac complished more when so heavily handicapped by disease and poverty. The record of his struggle is truly pathetic. In a letter to Paul Hamilton Hayne, written in 1880, he gives us a glimpse both of his physical suffering and his mental agony. " I could never tell you," he says, " the extremity of illness, of poverty, and of unceasing toil, in which I have spent the last three years, and you would need only once to see the weariness with which I crawl to bed after a long day's work, and after a long night's work at the heels of it — and Sundays just as well as other days — in order to find in your heart a full warrant for my silence. It seems incredible that I have printed such an

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unchristian quantity of matter — all, too, tolerably successful — and secured so little money; and the wife and the four boys, who are so lovely that I would not think a palace good enough for them if I had it, make one's earnings seem all the less." During all these years of toil he longed to be delivered from the hard struggle for bread that he might give himself more fully to music and poetry.

In 1867, while in charge of a prosperous school at Prattville, Alabama, he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Georgia. It proved a union in which Lanier found perpetual inspiration and comfort. His new-found strength and happiness are reflected in more than one of his poems. In Acknowledg ment we read : —

" By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine."

And in My Springs, he says again, with great beauty : —

" Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete — Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet — I marvel that God made you mine, For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine ! "

In 1873, after giving up the study of law in his father's office, he went to Baltimore, where he was engaged as first flute for the Peabody Symphony concerts. This engagement was a bold under-

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taking, which cannot be better presented than in his own words. In a letter to Hayne he says : " Aside from the complete bouleversement of pro ceeding from the courthouse to the footlights, I was a raw player and a provincial withal, without practice, and guiltless of instruction — for I had never had a teacher. To go under these circum stances among old professional players, and assume a leading part in a large orchestra which was organized expressly to play the most difficult works of the great masters, was (now that it's all over) a piece of temerity that I don't remember ever to have equaled before. But I trusted in love, pure and simple, and was not disappointed ; for, as if by miracle, difficulties and discourage ments melted away before the fire of a passion for music which grows ever stronger within my heart ; and I came out with results more grati fying than it is becoming in me to specify." His playing possessed an exquisite charm. " In his hands the flute," to quote from the tribute paid him by his director, " no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration. Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry ; they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were, suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees."

Henceforth Baltimore was to be Lanier's home.

SIDNEY LANIER QI

In addition to music, he gave himself seriously to literature. Before this period he had written a number of poems, limited in range and somewhat labored in manner. The current of his life still set to music, and his poetic efforts seem to have been less a matter of inspiration than of deliberate choice. In literary form the influence of Poe is discernible ; but in subject-matter the sounds and colors of Nature, as in the poetry of his later years, occupy a prominent place. Of the poems of this early period the songs for The Jacquerie are the best. Here is a stanza of Betrayal: —

" The sun has kissed the violet sea,

And burned the violet to a rose.

O sea ! wouldst thou not better be

More violet still ? Who knows ? Who knows ? Well hides the violet in the wood : The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood, And winter's ill is violet's good ; But the bold glory of the rose, It quickly comes and quickly goes — Red petals whirling in white snows, Ah me ! "

After taking up his residence in Baltimore, Lanier entered upon a comprehensive course of reading and study, particularly in early English literature. He studied Anglo-Saxon, and familiar ized himself with Langland and Chaucer. He understood that any great poetic achievement must be based on extensive knowledge. A sweet warbler may depend on momentary inspiration ;

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but the great singer, who ft to instruct and move his age, must possess the insight and breadth of vision that come alone from a profound acquaint ance with Nature and human history. With keen critical discernment Lanier said that "the trouble with Poe was, he did not know enough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet." It was to prepare himself for the highest flights possible to him that he entered, with inextinguishable ardor, upon a wide course of reading.

In 1874 he was commissioned by a railroad com pany to write up the scenery, climate, and history of Florida. While spending a month or two with his family in Georgia, he wrote Corn, which deservedly ranks as one of his noblest poems. The delicate forms and colors of Nature touched him to an ecstasy of delight ; and at the same time they bodied forth to his imagination deep spiritual truths. As we read this poem, we feel that the poet has reached a height of which little promise is given in his earlier poems. Here are the opening lines : —

" To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, and flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands ; the embracing boughs express

A subtlety of mighty tenderness ; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.

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The beach dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song ; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy burgeoning."

This poem is remarkable, too, for its presenta tion of Lanier's conception of the poetic office. The poet should be a prophet and leader, arousing mankind to all noble truth and action : —

" Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands

Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, And waves his blades upon the very edge And hottest thicket of the battling hedge.

Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time, And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme —

Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow

By double increment, above, below ;

Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy ;

Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense. By every godlike sense

Transmuted from the four wild elements."

For a time Lanier had difficulty in finding a publisher. He made a visit to New York, but met only with rebuffs. But upheld, like Wordsworth, by a strong consciousness of the excellence of his work, he did not lose his cheerful hope and courage. " The more I am thrown against these people here,

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and the more reverses I surfer at their hands, the more confident I am of beating them finally. I do not mean by ' beating ' that I am in opposition to them, or that I hate them or feel aggrieved with them ; no, they know no better and they act up to their light with wonderful energy and consistency. I only mean that I am sure of being able, some day, to teach them better things and nobler modes of thought and conduct." Corn finally appeared in Lippincotfs Magazine for February, 1875.

From this time poetry became a larger part of Lanier's life. His poetic genius had attained to fullness of power. He gave freer rein to imagi nation and thought and expression. Speaking of Special Pleading, which was written in 1875, he says : " In this little song, I have begun to dare to give myself some freedom in my own peculiar style, and have allowed myself to treat words, similes, and meters with such freedom as I de sired. The result convinces me that I can do so now safely." In the next two or three years he produced such notable poems as The Song of tJie Chattahoochee, The Symphony, The Revenge of Hamish, Clover, The Bee, and The Waving of the Corn. They slowly gained recognition, and brought him the fellowship and encouragement of not a few literary people of distinction, among whom Bayard Taylor and Edmund Clarence Stedman deserve especial mention.

Perhaps none of Lanier's poems has been more popular than The Song of the CJiattahoochee. It does not reach the poetic heights of a few of

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his other poems, but it is perfectly clear, and has a pleasant lilting movement. Moreover, it teaches the important truth that we are to be dumb to the siren voices of ease and pleasure when the stern voice of duty calls. The concluding stanza is as follows : —

" But oh, not the hills of Habersham,

And oh, not the valleys of Hall, Shall hinder the rain from attaining the plain,

For downward the voices of duty call — Downward to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn, And a thousand meadows mortally yearn, And the final main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, And calls through the valleys of Hall."

In 1876, upon the recommendation of Bayard Taylor, Lanier was invited to write the centennial Cantata. As a poem, not much can be said in its favor. Its thought and form fall far below its ambitious conception, in which Columbia presents a meditation on the completed century of our country's history. On its publication it was sub ject to a good deal of unfavorable criticism ; but through it all, though it must have been a bitter disappointment, the poet never lost his faith in his genius and destiny. " The artist shall put forth, humbly and lovingly," he wrote to his father, " and without bitterness against opposition, the very best and highest that is within him, utterly regardless of contemporary criticism. What possible claim

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can contemporary criticism set up to respect — that criticism which crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, and drove Dante into a hell of exile ? "

The need of a regular income became more and more a necessity. " My head and my heart," he wrote, " are both so full of poems, which the dread ful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." He sought various positions — a clerkship in Washington, an assistant's place in the Peabody Library, a consulship in the south of France — all in vain. He lectured to parlor classes in literature — an enterprise from which he seems to have derived more fame than money. Finally, in 1879, he was appointed to a lectureship in English literature in Johns Hopkins University, from which dates the final period of his literary activity and of his life.

The first fruits of this appointment were a series of lectures on metrical forms, which appeared, in 1880, in a volume entitled The Science of English Verse. It is an original and suggestive work, in which, however, the author's predilections for music carry him too far. He has done well to emphasize the time element in English versification ; but his attempt to reduce all forms of verse to a musical notation can hardly be regarded as successful. His work, though comprehensive in scope, was not intended to impose a new set of laws upon the

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poet. " For the artist in verse," he says in his brief concluding chapter, " there is no law : the per ception and love of beauty constitute the whole outfit; and what is herein set forth is to be taken merely as enlarging that perception and exalting that love. In all cases, the appeal is to the ear ; but the ear should, for that purpose, be educated up to the highest possible plane of culture."

A second series of lectures, composed and delivered when the anguish of mortal illness was upon him, was subsequently published under the title, The English Novel. Its aim was to trace the development of personality in literature. It contains much suggestive and sound criticism. He did not share the fear entertained by some of his contemporaries, that science would gradually abolish poetry. Many of the finest poems in our language, as he pointed out, have been written while the wonderful discoveries of recent science were being made. " Now," he continues, " if we examine the course and progress of this poetry, born thus within the very grasp and maw of this terrible science, it seems to me that we find — as to the substance of poetry — a steadily increasing confidence and joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness of faith and love and duty and friendship and marriage, and the sovereign fact of man's personality, while as to the form of the poetry, we find that just as science has pruned our faith (to make it more faithful), so it has pruned our poetic form and technic, cutting away much unproductive wood and efHoresence, and creating

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 7

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finer reserves and richer yields." Among novelists he assigns the highest place to George Eliot, who " shows man what he maybe in terms of what he is." There are two poems of this closing period that exhibit Lanier's characteristic manner at its best. They are the high-water mark of his poetic achieve ment. They exemplify his musical theories of meter. They show the trend forced upon him by his innate love of music ; and though he might have written much more, if his life had been pro longed, it is doubtful whether he would have pro duced anything finer. Any further effort at musical effects would probably have resulted vin a kind of ecstatic rhapsody. The first of the poems in ques tion is the Marshes of Glynn, descriptive of the sea marshes near the city of Brunswick, Georgia.

" Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing- withholding and free —

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea !

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,

And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain."

The other poem of his closing period, Sunrise, his greatest production, was written during the high fever of his last illness. In the poet's col lected works, it is placed first in the series called Hymns of tJie Marshes. At times it almost

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reaches the point of ecstasy. His love of Nature finds supreme utterance.

" In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain

Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my

sleep ; Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and

of sweep,

Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,

Came to the gates of sleep.

Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling :

The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes,

Shaken with happiness : The gates of sleep stood wide. #***### " Oh, what if a sound should be made !

Oh, what if a bound should be laid To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence

a-spring, — To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence

the string !

I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam Will break as a bubble o'erblown in a dream, — Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night. Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light, Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem

But a bubble that broke in a dream, If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, Or a sound or a motion made."

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Throughout his artistic life Lanier was true to the loftiest ideals. He did not separate artistic from moral beauty. To his sensitive spirit, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty seemed interchangeable terms. He did not make the shallow cry of "art for art's sake" a pretext or excuse for moral taint. On the contrary, he maintained that all art should be the embodiment of truth, goodness, love. " Can not one say with authority," he inquires in one of his university lec tures, " to the young artist, whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel : so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that, unless you are suffused — soul and body, one might say — with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love — that is, the love of all things in their proper relation — unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty ; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to meddle with truth ; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness. In a word, unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."

Through these years of high aspiration and manly endeavor, the poet and musician was wag ing a losing fight with consumption. He was finally driven to tent life in a high, pure atmos phere as his only hope. He first went to Ashe- ville, North Carolina, and a little later to Lynn.

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But his efforts to regain his health proved in vain ; and on the /th of September, 1881, the tragic struggle was brought to a close.

The time has hardly come to give a final judg ment as to Lanier's place in American letters. He certainly deserves a place by the side of the very best poets of the South, and perhaps, as many believe, by the side of the greatest masters of American song. His genius had elements of originality equaled only by Poe. He had the high moral purpose of the artist-prophets ; but his efforts after musical effects, as well as his untimely death, prevented the full fruitage of his admirable genius. Many of the poems that he has left us are lacking in spontaneity and artistic finish. Alliterative effects are sometimes obtrusive. His poetic theories, as presented in The Science of English Verse, often outstripped his execution. But, after all these abatements are made, it re mains true that in a few pieces he has reached a trembling height of poetic and musical rapture that is unsurpassed in the whole range of American poetry.

FATHER RYAN.

CHAPTER VI

ABRAM J. RYAN

THE poems of Abram J. Ryan, better known as Father Ryan, are unambitious. The poet modestly wished to call them only verses ; and, as he tells us, they " were written at random, — off and on, here, there, anywhere, — just as the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry." His poems do not exhibit a painstaking, polished art. They are largely emotional out pourings of a heart that readily found expression in fluent, melodious lays. The poet-priest under stood their character too well to assign them a very high place in the realm of song ; yet the wish he expressed, that they might echo from heart to heart, has been fulfilled in no small degree. In Sentinel Songs he says : —

" I sing with a voice too low

To be heard beyond to-day, In minor keys of my people's woe, But my songs pass away.

" To-morrow hears them not —

To-morrow belongs to fame — My songs, like the birds', will be forgot And forgotten shall be my name. 103

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" And yet who knows ? Betimes

The grandest songs depart, While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes Will echo from heart to heart."

But few facts are recorded of Father Ryan's life. The memoir and the critique prefixed to the latest edition of his poems but poorly fulfill their design. Besides the absence of detail, there is an evident lack of taste and breadth of view. The poet's ecclesiastical relation is unduly magnified ; and the invidious comparisons made and the im moderate laudation expressed are far from agree able. But we are not left wholly at a loss. With the few recorded facts of his life as guide, the poems of Father Ryan become an interesting and instructive autobiography. He was a spontaneous singer whose inspiration came, not from distant fields of legend, history, science, but from his own experience ; and it is not difficult to read there a romance, or rather a tragedy, which imparts a deep pathos to his life. His interior life, as reflected in his poems, is all of good report, in no point clashing with the moral excellence befitting the priestly office.

Abram J. Ryan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, August 15, 1839, whither his parents, natives of Ireland, had immigrated not long before. He possessed the quick sensibilities characteristic of the Celtic race ; and his love for Ireland is reflected in a stout martial lyric entitled Erin's Flag: —

" Lift it up ! lift it up ! the old Banner of Green ! The blood of its sons has but brightened its sheen ;

ABRAM J. RYAN 10$

What though the tyrant has trampled it down,

Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown ?"

When he was seven or eight years old, his parents removed to St. Louis. He is said to have shown great aptitude in acquiring knowledge ; and his superior intellectual gifts, associated with an unusual reverence for sacred things, early indicated the priesthood as his future vocation. In the autobiographic poem, Their Story Runneth Thus, we have a picture of his youthful character. With a warm heart, he had more than the change- fulness of the Celtic temperament. In his boy hood, as throughout his maturity, he was strangely restless. As he says himself : —

" The boy was full of moods. Upon his soul and face the dark and bright Were strangely intermingled. Hours would pass Rippling with his bright prattle — and then, hours Would come and go, and never hear a word Fall from his lips, and never see a smile Upon his face. He was so like a cloud With ever-changeful hues."

When his preliminary training was ended, he en tered the Roman Catholic seminary at Niagara, New York. He was moved to the priesthood by a spirit of deep consecration. The writer of his memoir dwells on the regret with which he severed the ties binding him to home. No doubt he loved and honored his parents. But there was a still stronger attachment, which, broken by his call to the priest-

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hood, filled all his subsequent life with a conse crated sorrow. It was his love for Ethel : —

" A fair, sweet girl, with great, brown, wond'ring eyes That seemed to listen just as if they held The gift of hearing with the power of sight."

The two lovers, forgetting the sacredness of true human affection, had, with equal self-abnegation, resolved to give themselves to the church, she as a nun and he as a priest. He has given a touching picture of their last meeting : —

" One night in mid of May their faces met As pure as all the stars that gazed on them. They met to part from themselves and the world. Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed ; Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tears Fell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each : They were to meet no more. Their hands were clasped To tear the clasp in twain ; and all the stars Looked proudly down on them, while shadows knelt, Or seemed to kneel, around them with the awe Evoked from any heart by sacrifice. And in the heart of that last parting hour Eternity was beating. And he said : ' We part to go to Calvary and to God — This is our garden of Gethsemane ; And here we bow our heads and breathe His prayer Whose heart was bleeding, while the angels heard : Not my will, Father ! but Thine be done ! ' "

The Roman Catholic training and faith of Father Ryan exerted a deep influence upon his poetry.

ABRAM J. RYAN

His ardent studies in the ancient languages and in scholastic theology naturally withdrew his mind, to a greater or less degree, from intimate com munion with Nature. His poetry is principally subjective. Nature enters it only in a subordinate way ; its forms and sounds and colors do not in spire in him the rapture found in Hayne and Lanier. He not only treats of Scripture themes, as in St. Stephen, The Master's Voice, and A Christ mas Chant, but he also finds subjects, not always happily, in distinctive Roman Catholic dogma. The Feast of the Assumption and The Last of May, both in honor of the Virgin Mary, are sufficiently poetic ; but The Feast of the Sacred Heart is, in parts, too prosaically literal in its treatment of transubstantiation for any but the most believing and devout of Roman Catholics.

On the breaking out of the Civil War, Father Ryan entered the Confederate army as a chaplain, though he sometimes served in the ranks. In 1863 he ministered to the inmates of a prison in New Orleans during an epidemic of smallpox. His martial songs, The Sword of Robert Lee, The Conquered Banner, and March of the Deathless Dead, have been dear to many Southern hearts. He reverenced Lee as a peerless leader.

" Forth from its scabbard ! How we prayed

That sword might victor be ; And when our triumph was delayed, And many a heart grew sore afraid, We still hoped on while gleamed the blade

Of noble Robert Lee.

108 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" Forth from its scabbard all in vain Bright flashed the sword of Lee ; 'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again, It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain, Defeated, yet without a stain, Proudly and peacefully."

After four years of brave, bitter sacrifice be neath the Confederate flag, words like the follow ing appealed strongly to the men and women who loved The Conquered Banner : —

" Take that Banner down ! 'tis tattered ; Broken is its staff and shattered ; And the valiant hosts are scattered

Over whom it floated high. Oh ! 'tis hard for us to fold it ; Hard to think there's none to hold it ; Hard that those who once unrolled it

Now must furl it with a sigh.

" Furl that Banner ! True, 'tis gory, Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory. And 'twill live in song and story,

Though its folds are in the dust : For its fame on brightest pages, Penned by poets and by sages, Shall go sounding down the ages —

Furl its folds though now we must."

Father Ryan's devotion to the South was in tense. He long refused to accept the results of the war. The wrongs of the so-called Recon struction period aroused his ardent indignation,

ABRAM J. RYAN IOQ

and found expression in his song. In The Land We Love he says, with evident reference to those days : —

" Land where the victor's flag waves,

Where only the dead are the free I Each link of the chain that enslaves, But binds us to them and to thee."

But during the epidemic of yellow fever in 1878, his heart was touched by the splendid generosity of the North ; and, surrendering his sectional prejudice and animosity, he wrote Re united: —

" Purer than thy own white snow,

Nobler than thy mountains' height;

Deeper than the ocean's flow,

Stronger than thy own proud might ;

O Northland ! to thy sister land,

Was late thy mercy's generous deed and grand."

After the close of the Civil War, the restless tem perament of the poet-priest asserted itself in numer ous changes of residence. He was successively in Biloxi, Mississippi, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Au gusta, Georgia. In the latter place he published for some three years the Banner of the South, a periodical that exerted no small influence on the thought of the state. In 1870 he became pastor of St. Mary's church in Mobile. Two years later he made a trip to Europe, of which we find inter esting reminiscences in his poems. His visit to

IIO POETS OF THE SOUTH

Rome was the realization of a long-cherished de sire. He was honored with an audience by Pope Pius IX, of whom he has given a graphic sketch : —

<: I saw his face to-day ; he looks a chief Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile ; Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief, But in that grief the starlight of a smile. Deep, gentle eyes, with drooping lids that tell They are the homes where tears of sorrow dwell ; A low voice — strangely sweet — whose very tone Tells how these lips speak oft with God alone."

In Milan he was seriously ill. In his poem, After Sickness, we find an expression of his world- weariness and his longing for death : —

" I nearly died, I almost touched the door That swings between forever and no more ; I think I heard the awful hinges grate, Hour after hour, while I did weary wait Death's coming ; but alas ! 'twas all in vain : The door half opened and then closed again."

As a priest Father Ryan was faithful to his duties. But whether ministering at the altar or making the rounds of his parish, his spirit fre quently found utterance in song. In 1880 he published a volume of poems, to which only a few additions were subsequently made. The keynote of his poetry is struck in the opening piece, Song of the Mystic. He dwelt much in the " Valley of Silence."

ABRAM J. RYAN III

" Do you ask me the place of the Valley, Ye hearts that are harrowed by care ?

It lieth afar between mountains, And God and His angels are there :

And one is the dark mount of Sorrow, And one the bright mountain of Prayer."

The prevailing tone of Father Ryan's poems is one of sadness. His harp rarely vibrated to cheer ful strains. What was the cause of this sadness ? It may have been his keen sense of the tragic side of human life ; it may have been the enduring anguish that came from the crucified love of his youth. The poet himself refused to tell. In Lines — 1875, he says: —

" Go list to the voices of air, earth, and sea, And the voices that sound in the sky ; Their songs may be joyful to some, but to me There's a sigh in each chord and a sigh in each key, And thousands of sighs swell their grand melody. Ask them what ails them : they will not reply. They sigh — sigh forever — but never tell why. Why does your poetry sound like a sigh ? Their lips will not answer you ; neither shall I."

Yet, in spite of the prevailing tone of sorrow and weariness, Father Ryan was no pessimist. He held that life has " more of sweet than gall " —

" For every one : no matter who — Or what their lot — or high or low ;

All hearts have clouds — but heaven's blue Wraps robes of bright around each woe ;

And this is truest of the true :

112 POETS OF THE SOUTH

" That joy is stronger here than grief, Fills more of life, far more of years,

And makes the reign of sorrow brief ; Gives more of smiles for less of tears.

Joy is life's tree — grief but its leaves."

Father Ryan conceived of the poet's office as something seerlike or prophetic. With him, as with all great poets, the message counted for more than do rhythm and rhyme. Divorced from truth, art seemed to him but a skeleton masque. He preferred those melodies that rise on the wings of thought, and come to human hearts with an inspiration of faith and hope. He regarded genu ine poets as the high priests of Nature. Their sen sitive spirits, holding themselves aloof from common things, habitually dwell upon the deeper mysteries of life in something of a morbid loneliness. In Poets he says : —

" They are all dreamers ; in the day and night

Ever across their souls

The wondrous mystery of the dark or bright In mystic rhythm rolls.

" They live within themselves — they may not tell

What lieth deepest there ; Within their breast a heaven or a hell, Joy or tormenting care.

" They are the loneliest men that walk men's ways,

No matter what they seem ;

The stars and sunlight of their nights and days

Move over them in dream."

ABRAM J. RYAN 113

With Wordsworth, or rather with the great Apostle to the Gentiles, he held that Nature is but the vesture of God, beneath which may be dis cerned the divine glory and love. The visible seemed to him but an expression of the invisible.

" For God is everywhere — and he doth find In every atom which His hand hath made A shrine to hide His presence, and reveal His name, love, power, to those who kneel In holy faith upon this bright below, And lift their eyes, thro' all this mystery, To catch the vision of the great beyond."

With this view of Nature, it was but natural that its sounds and forms — its birds and flowers — should inspire devotion. In St. Marys, speak ing of the songs and silences of Nature, he says: —

" God comes close to me here — Back of ev'ry roseleaf there He is hiding — and the air Thrills with calls to holy prayer ;

Earth grows far, and heaven near.

" Every single flower is fraught With the very sweetest dreams, Under clouds or under gleams Changeful ever — yet meseems

On each leaf I read God's thought."

It can hardly be said that Father Ryan ever reaches far poetic heights. Neither in thought nor expression does he often rise above cultured com monplace. Fine artistic quality is supplanted by a

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 8

1 14 POETS OF THE SOUTH

sort of melodious fluency. Yet the form and tone of his poetry, nearly always in one pensive key, make a distinct impression, unlike that of any other American singer. " Religious feeling," it has been well said, " is dominant. The reader seems to be moving about in cathedral glooms, by dimly lighted altars, with sad procession of ghostly penitents and mourners fading into the darkness to the sad music of lamenting choirs. But the light which falls upon the gloom is the light of heaven, and amid tears and sighs, over farewells and crushed happiness, hope sings a vigorous though subdued strain." Having once caught his distinctive note of weary melancholy, we can recognize it among a chorus of a thousand singers. It is to his honor that he has achieved a distinctive place in American poetry.

His poetic craftsmanship is far from perfect. His artistic sense did not aspire to exquisite achieve ments. He delighted unduly in alliteration, asso nance, and rhyming effects, all which he sometimes carried to excess. In the first stanza, for example, of The Conquered Banner, popular as it is, the rhyme effect seems somewhat overdone : —

" Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary ; Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary ;

Furl it, fold it, it is best ; For there's not a man to wave it, 'And there's not a sword to save it, And there's not one left to lave it In the blood which heroes gave it ; And its foes now scorn and brave it ; Furl it, hide it — let it rest."

ABRAM J. RYAN I I 5

Here and there, too, are unmistakable echoes of Poe, as in the following stanza from At Last : —

" Into a temple vast and dim, Solemn and vast and dim, Just when the last sweet Vesper Hymn

Was floating far away, With eyes that tabernacled tears — Her heart the home of tears — And cheeks wan with the woes of years,

A woman went one day."

But in spite of these obvious defects, Father Ryan has been for years the most popular of South ern poets. His poems have passed through many editions, and there is still a large demand for them. They have something that outweighs their faults, and appeals strongly to the popular mind and heart. What is it? Perhaps it is impossible to answer this question fully. But in addition to the merits already pointed out, the work of Father Ryan is for the most part simple, spontaneous, and clear. It generally consists of brief lyrics devoted to the expression of a single mood or reflection. There is nothing in thought or style beyond the ready com prehension of the average reader. It does not require, as does the poetry of Browning, repeated and careful reading to render its meaning clear. It does not offend sensible people with its empty, overdone refinement. From beginning to end Father Ryan's poetry is a transparent casket, into which he has poured the richest treasures of a deeply sorrowing but ncble Christian spirit.

Il6 POETS OF THE SOUTH

Again, the pensive, moral tone of his poetry renders it attractive to many persons. He gives expression to the sad, reflective moods that are apt, especially in time of suffering or disappointment, to come to most of us. The moral sense of the American people is strong ; and. sometimes a com forting though commonplace truth from Nature is more pleasing than the most exquisite but superficial description of her beauties. How many have found solace in poems like A Thought : —

" The waving rose, with every breath Scents carelessly the summer air ; The wounded rose bleeds forth in death A sweetness far more rich and rare.

" It is a truth beyond our ken —

And yet a truth that all may read — It is with roses as with men,

The sweetest hearts are those that bleed.

" The flower which Bethlehem saw bloom

Out of a heart all full of grace, Gave never forth its full perfume Until the cross became its vase."

Then again, the poet-priest, as was becoming his character, deals with the mysteries of life. Much of our recent poetry is as trifling in theme as it is polished in workmanship. But Father Ryan habitually brings before us the profounder and sadder aspects of life. The truths of religion, the vicissitudes of human destiny, the tragedy of death — these are the themes in which he finds

ABRAM J. RYAN

his inspiration, and to which we all turn in our most serious moments. And though the strain in which he sings is attuned to tears, it is still illu mined by a strength-giving faith and hope. When we feel weighed down with a sense of pitiless law, when fate seems to cross our holiest aspirations with a ruthless hand, he bids us be of good cheer.

" There is no fate — God's love

Is law beneath each law, And law all laws above Fore'er, without a flaw."

In 1883 Father Ryan, whose reputation had been established by his volume of poems, under took a lecturing tour through the North in the interest of some charitable enterprise. At his best he was an eloquent speaker. But during the later years of his life impaired health interfered with prolonged mental effort. His mission had only a moderate degree of success. His sense of weariness deepened, and his eyes turned longingly to the life to come. In one of his later productions he said : —

" My feet are wearied, and my hands are tired,

My soul oppressed — And I desire, what I have long desired —

Rest — only rest. • ****•

" And so I cry a weak and human cry,

So heart oppressed ; And so I sigh a weak and human sigh For rest — for rest."

Il8 POETS OF THE SOUTH

At length, April 22, 1886, in a Franciscan mon astery at Louisville, came the rest for which he had prayed. And in that higher life to which he passed, we may believe that he was welcomed by her to whom in youth he had given the tender name of Ullainee, and for whom, through all the years of a great sacrifice, his faithful heart had yearned with an inextinguishable human longing.

ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS WITH NOTES

SELECTION FROM FRANCIS SCOTT KEY

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER1

O SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last

gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the

perilous fight, O'er the ramparts 2 we watched, were so gallantly

streaming ? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in

air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was

still there.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the

brave ?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the

deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence

reposes,3 What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering

steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half dis closes ?

I, 2, 3, etc., refer to the Notes, pp. 209-237.

121

122 POETS OF THE SOtjTH

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first

beam,

In full glory reflected now shines on the stream ; 'Tis the star-spangled banner ; O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the

brave !

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more ? 4

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps'

pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave ; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth

wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the

brave.

O ! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's deso lation ! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-

rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd

us a nation !

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto — " In God is our trust: " And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall

wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

SELECTIONS FROM RICHARD HENRY WILDE

STANZAS l

MY life is like the summer rose,

That opens to the morning sky, But, ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground — to die ! 2 Yet on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept the waste to see — But none shall weep a tear for me !

My life is like the autumn leaf

That trembles in the moon's pale ray : Its hold is frail — its date is brief,

Restless — and soon to pass away ! Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree — But none shall breathe a sigh for me !

My life is like the prints, which feet Have left on Tampa's3 desert strand ;

Soon as the rising tide shall beat, All trace will vanish from the sand ; 123

124 POETS OF THE SOUTH

Yet, as if grieving to efface

All vestige of the human race,

On that lone shore loud moans the sea —

But none, alas ! shall mourn for me !

A FAREWELL TO AMERICA1

FAREWELL, my more than fatherland !2

Home of my heart and friends, adieu ! Lingering beside some foreign strand,

How oft shall I remember you !

How often, o'er the waters blue. Send back a sigh to those I leave,

The loving and beloved few, Who grieve for me, — for whom I grieve !

We part ! — no matter how we part,

There are some thoughts we utter not, Deep treasured in our inmost heart,

Never revealed, and ne'er forgot !

Why murmur at the common lot ? We part ! — I speak not of the pain, —

But when shall I each lovely spot, And each loved face behold again ?

It must be months, — it may be years,3 —

It may — but no ! — I will not fill Fond hearts with gloom, — fond eyes with tears,

" Curious to shape uncertain ill."

SELECTIONS FROM RICHARD HENRY WILDE 125

Though humble, — few and far, — yet, still Those hearts and eyes are ever dear ;

Theirs is the love no time can chill, The truth no chance or change can sear !

All I have seen, and all I see,

Only endears them more and more ; Friends cool, hopes fade, and hours flee,

Affection lives when all is o'er !

Farewell, my more than native shore ! I do not seek or hope to find,

Roam where I will, what I deplore To leave with them and thee behind !

SELECTION FROM GEORGE D. PRENTICE

THE CLOSING YEAR1

'Tis midnight's holy hour, and silence now

Is brooding like a gentle spirit o'er

The still and pulseless world. Hark ! on the winds

The bell's deep tones are swelling, — 'tis the knell

Of the departed year.

No funeral train

Is sweeping past ; yet on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud ; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh ; and on yon cloud That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand — Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn

form,

And Winter with his aged locks — and breathe, In mournful cadences that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the earth forever.

'Tis a time

For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart a specter dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,

126

SELECTION FROM GEORGE D. PRENTICE I2/

Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold

And solemn finger to the beautiful

And holy visions that have passed away,

And left no shadow of their loveliness

On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts

The coffin lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love,

And, bending mournfully above the pale,

Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers

O'er what has passed to nothingness.

The year

Has gone, and with it many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful, — And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man, — and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and shield Flashed in the light of midday — and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came And faded like a wreath of mist at eve ; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their home In the dim land of dreams.

Remorseless Time ! Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe ! — what power

128 POETS OF THE SOUTH

Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity ? On, still on He presses, and forever. The proud bird, The condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northern hurricane, And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, Furls his broad wings at nightfall and sinks down To rest upon his mountain crag — but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinions. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow, — cities rise and sink Like bubbles on the water, — fiery isles Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns, — mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain, — new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations, — and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter a while in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away ^ To darkle in the trackless void, — yet Time, Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.

SELECTIONS FROM WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

THE LOST PLEIAD1

NOT in the sky,

Where it was seen

So long in eminence of light serene, —

Nor on the white tops of the glistering wave,

Nor down in mansions of the hidden deep,

Though beautiful in green

And crystal, its great caves of mystery, —

Shall the bright watcher have

Her place, and, as of old, high station keep !

Gone ! gone !

Oh ! nevermore, to cheer

The mariner, who holds his course alone

On the Atlantic, through the weary night,

When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep,

Shall it again appear,

With the sweet-loving certainty of light,

Down shining on the shut eyes of the deep !

The upward-looking shepherd on the hills Of Chaldea, night-returning with his flocks, He wonders why her beauty doth not blaze, Gladding his gaze, —

And, from his dreary watch along the rocks, Guiding him homeward o'er the perilous ways !

POETS OF THE SOUTH — 9 129

I3O POETS OF THE SOUTH

How stands he waiting still, in a sad maze, Much wondering, while the drowsy silence fills The sorrowful vault ! — how lingers, in the hope

that night

May yet renew the expected and sweet light, So natural to his sight ! 2

And lone,

Where, at the first, in smiling love she shone,

Brood the once happy circle of bright stars :

How should they dream, until her fate was known,

That they were ever confiscate to death ? 3

That dark oblivion the pure beauty mars,

And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath,

That they should fall from high ;

Their lights grow blasted by a touch, and die,

All their concerted springs of harmony

Snapt rudely, and the generous music gone !*

Ah ! still the strain

Of wailing sweetness fills the saddening sky ; The sister stars, lamenting in their pain That one of the selected ones must die, — Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest ! Alas ! 'tis ever thus the destiny. Even Rapture's song hath evermore a tone Of wailing, as for bliss too quickly gone. The hope most precious is the soonest lost, The flower most sweet is first to feel the frost. Are not all short-lived things the loveliest ? And, like the pale star, shooting down the sky, Look they not ever brightest, as they fly From the lone sphere they blest !

SELECTIONS FROM WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

THE SWAMP FOX1

WE follow where the Swamp Fox guides,

His friends and merry men are we ; And when the troop of Tarleton 2 rides,

We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed,

Our home is in the red deer's den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead,

For we are wild and hunted men.

We fly by day and shun its light,

But, prompt to strike the sudden blow, We mount and start with early night,

And through the forest track our foe.3 And soon he hears our chargers leap,

The flashing saber blinds his eyes, And ere he drives away his sleep,

And rushes from his camp, he dies.

Free bridle bit, good gallant steed,

That will not ask a kind caress To swim the Santee 4 at our need,

When on his heels the foemen press, — The true heart and the ready hand,

The spirit stubborn to be free, The twisted bore, the smiting brand, —

And we are Marion's men, you see.

Now light the fire and cook the meal, The last, perhaps, that we shall taste ;

I hear the Swamp Fox round us steal, And that's a sign we move in haste,

132 POETS OF THE SOUTH

He whistles' to the scouts, and hark !

You hear his order calm and low. Come, wave your torch across the dark,

And let us see the boys that go.

We may not see their forms again,

God help 'em, should they find the strife ! For they are strong and fearless men,

And make no coward terms for life ; They'll fight as long as Marion bids,

And when he speaks the word to shy, Then, not till then, they turn their steeds,

Through thickening shade and swamp to fly.

Now stir the fire and lie at ease, —

The scouts are gone, and on the brush I see the Colonel5 bend his knees,

To take his slumbers too. But hush ! He's praying, comrades ; 'tis not strange ;

The man that's fighting day by day May well, when night comes, take a change,

And down upon his knees to pray.

Break up that hoecake, boys, and hand

The sly and silent jug that's there ; I love not it should idly stand

When Marion's men have need of cheer. 'Tis seldom that our luck affords

A stuff like this we just have quaffed, And dry potatoes on our boards

May always call for such a draught.

SELECTIONS FROM WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 1 33

Now pile the brush and roll the log ;

Hard pillow, but a soldier's head That's half the time in brake and bog

Must never think of softer bed. The owl is hooting to the night,

The cooter6 crawling o'er the bank, And in that pond the flashing light

Tells where the alligator sank.

What ! 'tis the signal ! start so soon,

And through the Santee swamp so deep, Without the aid of friendly moon,

And we, Heaven help us ! half asleep ! But courage, comrades ! Marion leads,

The Swamp Fox takes us out to-night ; So clear your swords and spur your steeds,

There's goodly chance, I think, of fight.

We follow where the Swamp Fox guides,

We leave the swamp and cypress tree, Our spurs are in our coursers' sides,

And ready for the strife are we. The Tory camp is now in sight,

And there he cowers within his den ; He hears our shouts, he dreads the fight,

He fears, and flies from Marion's men.

SELECTIONS FROM EDWARD COATE PINKNEY

A HEALTH 1

I FILL this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon ; To whom the better elements

And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air,

'Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music's own,

Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody

Dwells ever in her words ; The coinage of her heart are they,

And from her lips each flows As one may see the burdened bee

Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,2 The measures of her hours ;

Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers ; 134

SELECTIONS FROM EDWARD COATE PINKNEY 135

And lovely passions, changing oft,

So fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns, —

The idol of past years !

Of her bright face one glance will trace

A picture on the brain, And of her voice in echoing hearts

A sound must long remain; But memory, such as mine of her,

So very much endears, When death is nigh my latest sigh

Will not be life's, but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon - Her health ! and would on earth there stood

Some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry,

And weariness a name.3

SONG

WE break the glass, whose sacred wine

To some beloved health we drain, Lest future pledges, less divine,

Should e'er the hallowed toy profane ; And thus I broke a heart that poured

Its tide of feelings out for thee, In draught, by after-times deplored,

Yet dear to memory.

136 POETS OF THE SOUTH

But still the old, impassioned ways

And habits of my mind remain, And still unhappy light displays

Thine image chambered in my brain ; And still it looks as when the hours

Went by like flights of singing birds,1 Or that soft chain of spoken flowers

And airy gems, — thy words.

VOTIVE SONG

I BURN no incense, hang no wreath,

On this thine early tomb : Such can not cheer the place of death,

But only mock its gloom. Here odorous smoke and breathing flower

No grateful influence shed ; They lose their perfume and their power,

When offered to the dead.

And if, as is the Afghaun's creed,

The spirit may return, A disembodied sense to feed

On fragrance, near its urn, — It is enough that she, whom thou

Didst love in living years, Sits desolate beside it now,

And fall these heavy tears.

SELECTION FROM PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE

FLORENCE VANE 1

I LOVED thee long and dearly,

Florence Vane ; My life's bright dream, and early,

Hath come again ; I renew, in my fond vision,

My heart's dear pain ; My hope, and thy derision,

Florence Vane.

The ruin lone and hoary,

The ruin old, Where thou didst hark my story,

At even told, — That spot — the hues Elysian

Of sky and plain — I treasure in my vision,

Florence Vane.

Thou wast lovelier than the roses

In their prime ; Thy voice excelled the closes

Of sweetest rhyme ;

POETS OF THE SOUTH

Thy heart was as a river

Without a main.2 Would I had loved thee never,

Florence Vane.

But fairest, coldest wonder !

Thy glorious clay Lieth the green sod under —

Alas the day ! And it boots not to remember

Thy disdain — To quicken love's pale ember,

Florence Vane.

The lilies of the valley

By young graves weep, The pansies love to dally

Where maidens sleep ; May their bloom, in beauty vying,

Never wane, Where thine earthly part is lying,

Florence Vane!

SELECTION FROM THEODORE O'HARA

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD 1

THE muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo : No more on Life's parade shall meet

That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground

Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round,

The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance

Now swells upon the wind ; No troubled thought at midnight haunts

Of loved ones left behind ; No vision of the morrow's strife

The warrior's dream alarms ; No braying horn nor screaming fife

At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shivered swords are red with rust, Their plumed heads are bowed ;

Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, Is now their martial shroud. 139

I4O POETS OF THE SOUTH

And plenteous funeral tears have washed The red stains from each brow,

And the proud forms, by battle gashed, Are free from anguish now.

The neighing troop, the flashing blade,

The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade,

The din and shout, are past; Nor war's wild note nor glory's peal

Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that nevermore may feel

The rapture of the fight.

Like the fierce northern hurricane

That sweeps his great plateau, Flushed with the triumph yet to gain,

Came down the serried foe.2 Who heard the thunder of the fray

Break o'er the field beneath, Knew well the watchword of that day

Was "Victory or Death."

Long had the doubtful conflict raged

O'er all that stricken plain, For never fiercer fight had waged

The vengeful blood of Spain ; 3 And still the storm of battle blew,

Still swelled the gory tide ; Not long, our stout old chieftain knew,

Such odds his strength could bide.

SELECTION FROM THEODORE O HARA 14!

'Twas in that hour his stern command

Called to a martyr's grave The flower of his beloved land,

The nation's flag to save. By rivers of their fathers' gore

His first-born laurels grew,4 And well he deemed the sons would pour

Their lives for glory too.

Full many a norther's breath has swept

O'er Angostura's plain,5 And long the pitying sky has wept

Above its moldered slain. The raven's scream, or eagle's flight,

Or shepherd's pensive lay, Alone awakes each sullen height

That frowned o'er that dread fray.

Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground,

Ye must not slumber there, Where stranger steps and tongues resound

Along the heedless air. Your own proud land's heroic soil

Shall be your fitter grave : She claims from war his richest spoil —

The ashes of her brave.

Thus 'neath their parent turf they rest,

Far from the gory field, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast

On many a bloody shield ;

6 y

I42 POETS OF THE SOUTH

The sunshine of their native sky

Smiles sadly on them here, And kindred eyes and hearts watch by

The heroes' sepulcher.

Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead !

Dear as the blood ye gave ; No impious footstep here shall tread

The herbage of your grave ; Nor shall your glory be forgot

While Fame her record keeps, Or Honor points the hallowed spot

Where valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone

In deathless song shall tell, When many a vanished age hath flown,

The story how ye fell ; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,

Nor Time's remorseless doom, Shall dim one ray of glory's light

That gilds your deathless tomb.

SELECTIONS FROM FRANCIS ORRERY TICKNOR

THE VIRGINIANS OF THE VALLEY1

THE knightliest of the knightly race

That, since the days of old, Have kept the lamp of chivalry

Alight in hearts of gold ; The kindliest of the kindly band

That, rarely hating ease, Yet rode with Spotswood 2 round the land,

With Raleigh round the seas ;

Who climbed the blue Virginian hills

Against embattled foes, And planted there, in valleys fair,

The lily and the rose ; Whose fragrance lives in many lands,

Whose beauty stars the earth, And lights the hearths of happy homes

With loveliness and worth.

We thought they slept ! — the sons who kept

The names of noble sires, And slumbered while the darkness crept

Around their vigil fires ;

144 POETS OF THE SOUTH

But aye the " Golden Horseshoe " knights

Their Old Dominion 3 keep, Whose foes have found enchanted ground.

But not a knight asleep.

LITTLE GIFFEN1

OUT of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire ; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle2 and he sixteen!) Specter ! such as you seldom see, Little Giff en, of Tennessee !

" Take him and welcome ! " the surgeons said ;

Little the doctor can help the dead !

So we took him ; and brought him where

The balm was sweet in the summer air ;

And we laid him down on a wholesome bed, —

Utter Lazarus, heel to head !

And we watched the war with abated breath, — Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death. Months of torture, how many such ? Weary weeks of the stick and crutch ; And still a glint of the steel-blue eye Told of a spirit that wouldn't die,

And didn't. Nay, more ! in death's despite The crippled skeleton " learned to write." " Dear Mother," at first, of course ; and then " Dear captain," inquiring about the men. Captain's answer : " Of eighty-and-five, Giffen and I are left alive."

SELECTIONS FROM FRANCIS ORRERY TICKNOR 145

Word of gloom from the war, one day ;

Johnston pressed at the front, they say.

Little Giffen was up and away ;

A tear — his first — as he bade good-by,

Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.

"I'll write, if spared!" There was news of the

fight; But none of Giffen. — He did not write.3

I sometimes fancy that, were I king

Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring,*

With the song of the minstrel in mine ear,

And the tender legend that trembles here,

I'd give the best on his bended knee,

The whitest soul of my chivalry,

For " Little Giffen," of Tennessee.

POETS OF THE SOUTH — IO

SELECTION FROM JOHN R. THOMPSON

MUSIC IN CAMP1

Two armies covered hill and plain, Where Rappahannock's waters 2

Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain Of battle's recent slaughters.

The summer clouds lay pitched like tents

In meads of heavenly azure ; And each dread gun of the elements

Slept in its hid embrasure.

The breeze so softly blew, it made

No forest leaf to quiver, And the smoke of the random cannonade

Rolled slowly from the river.

And now, where circling hills looked down

With cannon grimly planted, O'er listless camp and silent town

The golden sunset slanted.

When on the fervid air there came A strain — now rich, now tender;

The music seemed itself aflame With day's departing splendor. 146

SELECTION FROM JOHN R. THOMPSON I

A Federal band, which, eve and morn, Played measures brave and nimble,

Had just struck up, with flute and horn And lively clash of cymbal.

Down flocked the soldiers to the banks,

Till, margined by its pebbles, One wooded shore was blue with " Yanks,'1

And one was gray with " Rebels."

Then all was still, and then the band, With movement light and tricksy,

Made stream and forest, hill and strand, Reverberate with " Dixie."

The conscious stream with burnished glow

Went proudly o'er its pebbles, But thrilled throughout its deepest flow

With yelling of the Rebels.

Again a pause, and then again The trumpets pealed sonorous,

And "Yankee Doodle" was the strain To which the shore gave chorus.

The laughing ripple shoreward flew,

To kiss the shining pebbles ; Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue

Defiance to the Rebels.

And yet once more the bugles sang

Above the stormy riot ; No shout upon the evening rang —

There reigned a holy quiet.

14-8 POETS OF THE SOUTH

The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood Poured o'er the glistening pebbles ;

All silent now the Yankees stood, And silent stood the Rebels.

No unresponsive soul had heard That plaintive note's appealing,

So deeply " Home, Sweet Home " had stirred The hidden founts of feeling.

Or Blue or Gray the soldier sees,

As by the wand of fairy, The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees,

The cabin by the prairie.

Or cold or warm, his native skies

Bend in their beauty o'er him ; Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes,

His loved ones stand before him.

As fades the iris after rain

In April's tearful weather, The vision vanished, as the strain

And daylight died together.

And memory, waked by music's art, Expressed in simplest numbers,

Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart, Made light the Rebel's slumbers.

And fair the form of music shines,

That bright celestial creature, Who still, 'mid war's embattled lines,

Gave this one touch of Nature.

SELECTIONS FROM MRS. MARGARET J. PRESTON

Grateful acknowledgment is here made to Dr. George J. Pres ton of Baltimore, for permission to use the two following poems.

A NOVEMBER NOCTURNE

THE autumn air sweeps faint and chill Across the maple-crested hill;

And on my ear

Falls, tingling clear, A strange, mysterious, woodland thrill.

From utmost twig, from scarlet crown Untouched with yet a tinct of brown,

Reluctant, slow,

As loath to go, The loosened leaves come wavering down ;

And not a hectic trembler there, In its decadence, doomed to share

The fate of all, -

But in its fall Flings something sob-like on the air.

No drift or dream of passing bell,

Dying afar in twilight dell, Hath any heard, Whose chimes have stirred

More yearning pathos of farewell. 149

I5O POETS OF THE SOUTH

A silent shiver as of pain,

Goes quivering through each sapless vein ;

And there are moans,

Whose undertones Are sad as midnight autumn rain.

Ah, if without its dirge- like sigh, No lightest, clinging leaf can die, —

Let him who saith

Decay and death Should bring no heart-break, tell me why.

Each graveyard gives the answer : there I read Resurgam 2 everywhere,

So easy said

Above the dead — So weak to anodyne despair.

CALLING THE ANGELS IN

WE mean to do it. Some day, some day, We mean to slacken this feverish rush

That is wearing our very souls away, And grant to our hearts a hush

That is only enough to let them hear

The footsteps of angels drawing near.

We mean to do it. Oh, never doubt,

When the burden of daytime broil is o'er,

We'll sit and muse while the stars come out, As the patriarchs sat in the door 1

Of their tents with a heavenward-gazing eye,

To watch for angels passing by.

SELECTIONS FROM MRS. MARGARET J. PRESTON 151

We've seen them afar at high noontide,

When fiercely the world's hot flashings beat ;

Yet never have bidden them turn aside, To tarry in converse sweet ;

Nor prayed them to hallow the cheer we spread,

To drink of our wine and break our bread.

We promise our hearts that when the stress Of the life work reaches the longed-for close,

When the weight that we groan with hinders less, We'll welcome such calm repose

As banishes care's disturbing din,

And then — we'll call the angels in.

The day that we dreamed of comes at length, When tired of every mocking guest,

And broken in spirit and shorn of strength, We drop at the door of rest,

And wait and watch as the day wanes on —

But the angels we meant to call are gone !

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE

TO HELEN l

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicaean 2 barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.3

Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand ! Ah, Psyche,4 from the regions which Are Holy Land !

ANNABEL LEE1

IT was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,2 That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee ; And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE 153

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea :

But we loved with a love that was more than love,

I and my Annabel Lee ; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.3

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee ; So that her highborn kinsmen 4 came

And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me ; Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we,

Of many far wiser than we ; And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee :

154 POETS OF THE SOUTH

For the moon never beams without bringing me

dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright

eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 5 Of my darling — my darling — my life and my

bride,

In her sepulcher there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

THE HAUNTED PALACE1

IN the greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace —

Radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion,

It stood there ; Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden

Time long ago), And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away.

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE 155

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically,

To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting,

Porphyrogene, In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him desolate ! ) And round about his home the glory

That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

And travelers now within that valley Through the red-litten windows see

Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody ;

POETS OF THE SOUTH

While like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever.

And laugh — but smile no more.

THE CONQUEROR WORM1

Lo ! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years. An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theater to see

A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly ;

Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their condor wings

Invisible woe.

That motley drama — oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot ! With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot ; And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE 157

But see amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude : A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude ! It writhes — it writhes ! — with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out — out are the lights — out all !

And over each quivering form The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy " Man,"

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgot ten lore, —

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at my chamber door —

Only this and nothing more."

158 POETS OF THE SOUTH

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak

December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost

upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I had

sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for

the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels

name Lenore :

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before ;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

" 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my cham ber door :

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger ; hesitating then

no longer, " Sir," said I, " or Madam, truly your forgiveness

I implore ; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you

came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my

chamber door,

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE 159

That I scarce was sure I heard you" — here I opened wide the door; —

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before ;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whis pered word " Lenore ? "

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word " Lenore : "

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

" Surely," said I, " surely that is something at my window lattice ;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mys tery explore —

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore :

'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a

flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintl1-'

days of yore.

I6O POETS OF THE SOUTH

Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute

stopped or stayed he ; But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my

chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my

chamber door :

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the counte nance it wore, —

" Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, " art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore :

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear dis course so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore ;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door —

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as " Nevermore."

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE l6l

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust,

spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he

did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered ; not a feather

then he fluttered, Till I scarcely more than muttered, • — " Other

friends have flown before ; On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes

have flown before."

Then the bird said, " Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

" Doubtless," said I, " what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmer ciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore :

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of ' Never — nevermore.' "

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into

smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of

bird and bust and door ; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to

linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird

of yore,

POETS OF THE SOUTH — II

1 62 POETS OF THE SOUTH

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore —

Meant in croaking " Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable

expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my

bosom's core ; This and more I sat divining, with my head at

ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight

gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight

gloating o'er

She shall press, ah, nevermore !

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.

''Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memo ries of Lenore !

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore ! "

Quoth the Raven, ." Nevermore."

" Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil ! prophet still,

if bird or devil ! Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed

thee here ashore,

SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE 163

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land

enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted —tell me truly, I

implore : Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell me —

tell me, I implore ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

" Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil !

By that heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore :

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the dis tant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore :

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

" Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!"

I shrieked, upstarting : " Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's

Plutonian shore ! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy

soul hath spoken ! Leave my loneliness unbroken ! quit the bust above

my door ! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy

form from off my door ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

164 POETS OF THE SOUTH

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;2

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor ; 3

And my soul from out that shadow that lies float ing on the floor

Shall be lifted — nevermore !

SELECTIONS FROM PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

For their generous permission to use A'ethra, Under the Pines, Cloud Pictures, and Lyric of Action, the grateful acknowledgments of the editor are due to The Lothrop Publishing Company, Boston, who hold the copyright.

THE WILL AND THE WING1

To have the will to soar, but not the wings, Eyes fixed forever on a starry height,

Whence stately shapes of grand imaginings Flash down the splendors of imperial light ;

And yet to lack the charm2 that makes them ours, The obedient vassals of that conquering spell,

Whose omnipresent and ethereal powers Encircle Heaven, nor fear to enter Hell ;

This is the doom of Tantalus3 — the thirst For beauty's balmy fount to quench the fires

Of the wild passion that our souls have nurst In hopeless promptings — unfulfilled desires.

Yet would I rather in the outward state Of Song's immortal temple lay me down,

A beggar basking by that radiant gate,4

Than bend beneath the haughtiest empire's crown! 165

1 66 POETS OF THE SOUTH

For sometimes, through the bars, my ravished eyes Have caught brief glimpses