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Poets of the South

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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._




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 interests," there is a drifting away from poetic sentiment
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 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 consideration. 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 following 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

I. MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH

II. EDGAR ALLAN POE

III. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

IV. HENRY TIMROD

V. SIDNEY LANIER

VI. ABRAM J. RYAN

ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS

NOTES


* * * * *




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 _Metamorphoses_,
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 construct his
careful, rhymed pentameters. The conditions under which he wrote were
very far removed 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
Revolution. 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 politics; and many of
the foremost statesmen of our country--men like Washington, Jefferson,
Marshall, Calhoun, Benton--were from the Southern states. The system of
slavery, while building up baronial homes of wealth, culture, and
boundless hospitality, checked manufacture, retarded the growth of
cities, and turned the tide of immigration 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 English classics, and Pope, Addison, and Shakespeare formed a
part of every gentleman's library. There were no great publishing houses
to stimulate literary 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 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 literary 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 remarkable 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.
"Legaré'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 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 Gazette_, 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 literary 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
theological or philosophical tenets. They have not aspired to the rôle 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 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 literature as is often supposed.
While there have been very few to make literature a vocation, a
surprisingly large number have made it an avocation. Law and literature,
as we shall have occasion to note, have frequently gone hand in hand. A
recent work on Southern literature [*] 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 examination of their works reveals, among a good deal that is
commonplace and imitative, many a little 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.
[Footnote *: Manly's _Southern Literature._]

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1780-1843) is known throughout the land as the author
of _The Star-spangled Banner_, the noblest, perhaps, of our patriotic
hymns. He was born in Frederick County, Maryland, and was educated
at St. John's College, Annapolis. He studied law, and after practicing
with success in Frederick City, he removed to Washington, 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 bombardment 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?

"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 literature 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!
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!"

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 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!
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 University, and studied law; but he soon gave up his
profession for the more congenial pursuit of literature. 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 the _Journal_.

He was a man of brilliant intellect, and soon made his paper a power in
education, society, and politics. Apart from his own vigorous
contributions, 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 a stout opponent of secession; and when the Civil War came
his paper, like his adopted state, suffered 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
_Prenticeana_. 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 remarkable, its style
is, perhaps, too declamatory for the taste of the present generation.
The following 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.
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."


WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870), a native of Charleston, was a man of
remarkable versatility. 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 productiveness he surpassed his great Northern
contemporary.

Simms was a poet before he became a novelist. The poetic impulse
manifested itself early; and before he was twenty-five he had published
three or more volumes of verse. In 1832 his imaginative 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
character of the red man is less idealized than in Cooper's _Leather-
stocking 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 following 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
diplomatist, 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 Baltimore. 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
And solemn smokes, like altars of the world."

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 occupied 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 Health_:--

"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 Princeton. He early manifested a
literary bent, and wrote for the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, the oldest
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 he 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 experience:--

"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;
Thy heart was as a river
Without a main.
Would I had loved thee never,
Florence Vane!"


THEODORE O'HARA (1820-1867) is chiefly remembered for a single poem that
has touched the national heart. He was born in Danville, Kentucky. After
taking a course in law, he accepted a clerkship in the Treasury
Department at Washington. On the outbreak of the Mexican War he enlisted
as a private soldier, and by his gallant service 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 profession. Later he became
editor of the _Mobile Register_, and _Frankfort Yeoman_ in Kentucky. In
the Civil War he served as colonel in the Confederate 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.

"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 commemorated in his famous poem.


FRANCIS ORRERY TICKNOR (1822-1874) was a physician 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 Ticknor'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 Horseshoe," 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 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."

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