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Poets of the South

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So be it always, then, with you;
So be it--whether false or true--
I press my faith on none;
If other fancies please you more,
The flowers shall blossom as before,
Dear as the Sibyl-leaves [11] of yore,
But senseless every one.

Yet, though I give you no reply,
It were not hard to justify
My creed to partial ears;
But, conscious of the cruel part,
My rhymes would flow with faltering art,
I could not plead against your heart,
Nor reason with your tears.



SONNET [12]

Poet! if on a lasting fame be bent
Thy unperturbing hopes, thou wilt not roam
Too far from thine own happy heart and home;
Cling to the lowly earth and be content!

So shall thy name be dear to many a heart;
So shall the noblest truths by thee be taught;
The flower and fruit of wholesome human thought
Bless the sweet labors of thy gentle art.

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.



SONNET [13]

Most men know love but as a part of life;[14]
They hide it in some corner of the breast,
Even from themselves; and only when they rest
In the brief pauses of that daily strife,

Wherewith the world might else be not so rife,
They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy
To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy)
And hold it up to sister, child, or wife.

Ah me! why may not love and life be one?[15]
Why walk we thus alone, when by our side,
Love, like a visible God, might be our guide?
How would the marts grow noble! and the street,
Worn like a dungeon floor by weary feet,
Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun!



THE SUMMER BOWER [16]

It is a place whither I have often gone
For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool,
A beautiful recess in neighboring woods.
Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall.
Arch it o'erhead and column it around,
Framing a covert, natural and wild,
Domelike and dim; though nowhere so enclosed
But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot
Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here
A transient and unfrequent visitor;
Yet, if the day be calm, not often then,
Whilst the high pines in one another's arms
Sleep, you may sometimes with unstartled ear
Catch the far fall of voices, how remote
You know not, and you do not care to know.
The turf is soft and green, but not a flower
Lights the recess, save one, star-shaped and bright--
I do not know its name--which here and there
Gleams like a sapphire set in emerald.
A narrow opening in the branchèd roof,
A single one, is large enough to show,
With that half glimpse a dreamer loves so much,
The blue air and the blessing of the sky.
Thither I always bent my idle steps,
When griefs depressed, or joys disturbed my heart,
And found the calm I looked for, or returned
Strong with the quiet rapture in my soul.[17]
But one day,
One of those July days when winds have fled
One knows not whither, I, most sick in mind
With thoughts that shall be nameless, yet, no doubt,
Wrong, or at least unhealthful, since though dark
With gloom, and touched with discontent, they had
No adequate excuse, nor cause, nor end,
I, with these thoughts, and on this summer day,
Entered the accustomed haunt, and found for once
No medicinal virtue.
Not a leaf
Stirred with the whispering welcome which I sought,
But in a close and humid atmosphere,
Every fair plant and implicated bough
Hung lax and lifeless. Something in the place,
Its utter stillness, the unusual heat,
And some more secret influence, I thought,
Weighed on the sense like sin. Above I saw,
Though not a cloud was visible in heaven,
The pallid sky look through a glazèd mist
Like a blue eye in death.
The change, perhaps,
Was natural enough; my jaundiced sight,
The weather, and the time explain it all:
Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot,
And shrined it in these verses for my heart.
Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought
Not less, and in all shades of various moods;
But always shun to desecrate the spot
By vain repinings, sickly sentiments,
Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though
Pure as she was in Eden when her breath
Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse,
In her own way and with a just reserve,
To sympathize with human suffering;[18]
But for the pains, the fever, and the fret
Engendered of a weak, unquiet heart,
She hath no solace; and who seeks her when
These be the troubles over which he moans,
Reads in her unreplying lineaments
Rebukes, that, to the guilty consciousness,
Strike like contempt.

For a general introduction to the following selections, see Chapter IV.
The poet's verse is perfectly clear. He prefers to

"Cling to the lowly and be content."

[Footnote 1: This poem, which first appeared in _Russell's Magazine_,
exhibits one of Timrod's characteristics: he does not describe Nature for
its own sake, as Hayne often does, but for the sake of some truth or
lesson in relation to man. The lesson of this poem is that a life of
uninterrupted ease and comfort is not favorable to the development of
noble character.]

[Footnote 2: This selection illustrates the fierce energy of the poet's
martial lyrics. Compare _Bannockburn_ by Burns, which Carlyle said
"should be sung with the throat of the whirlwind."]

[Footnote 3: _Byre_ is a cow-stable.]

[Footnote 4: _Rack_, usually _wrack_, signifies ruin or
destruction.]

[Footnote 5: This lyric, which was sung on the occasion of decorating the
graves of the Confederate dead in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South
Carolina, in 1867, has been much admired, especially the last stanza.]

[Footnote 6: It is interesting to know that this prediction has been
fulfilled. A monument of granite now stands above the dead.]

[Footnote 7: _Behalf_, instead of _in behalf of_, is a rather
hazardous construction.]

[Footnote 8: A noble bronze figure of a color bearer on a granite
pedestal now commemorates the fallen heroes.]

[Footnote 9: This poem first appeared in the _Southern Literary Messenger_
in 1851. The first stanza of this half-playful, half-serious piece,
mentions the objects in which the poet most delighted.]

[Footnote 10: This belief has been frequently held, and has some support
from recent scientific experiments. But that this sentiency goes as far
as the poet describes, is of course pure fancy.]

[Footnote 11: The sibyls (Sybil is an incorrect form) were, according to
ancient mythology, prophetic women. The sibylline leaves or books
contained their teachings, and were preserved with the utmost care in
Rome. The sibyl of Cumae conducted Aeneas through the under world, as
narrated in the sixth book of Virgil's _Aeneid_.]

[Footnote 12: This sonnet expresses the poet's creed, to which his
practice was confirmed. This fact imparts unusual simplicity to his
verse--a simplicity that strikes us all the more at the present time,
when an over-refinement of thought and expression is in vogue.]

[Footnote 13: This sonnet, on the commonest of all poetic themes, treats
of love in a deep, serious way. It is removed as far as possible from the
sentimental.]

[Footnote 14: This line reminds us of a well-known passage in Byron:--
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence. Man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange."]

[Footnote 15: This is the divine ideal, the realization of which will
bring the true "Golden Age." "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God, and God in him."--I _John_ iv. 16.]

[Footnote 16: This poem first appeared in the _Southern Literary Messenger_
in 1852. It will serve to show Timrod's manner of using blank verse. It
will be observed that "a lesson" is again the principal thing.]

[Footnote 17: This recalls the closing lines of Longfellow's _Sunrise
on the Hills_:--

"If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou wouldst forget,
If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears."]

[Footnote 18: Compare the following lines from Bryant's _Thanatopsis_:--

"To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware."]


* * * * *

SELECTIONS FROM SIDNEY LANIER

SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE [1]

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,[2]
The hurrying rain,[3] to reach the plain,
Has run the rapid and leapt the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accepted his bed, or narrow or wide,
And fled from folly on every side,
With a lover's pain to attain the plain,
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried, _Abide, abide_;
The wilful water weeds held me thrall,
The laurel, slow-laving,[4] turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said _stay_,
The dewberry dipped for to win delay,[5]
And the little reeds sighed _Abide, abide_,
_Here in the hills of Habersham,_
_Here in the valleys of Hall._

High over the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, _Pass not so cold these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall._

And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Barred[6] me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a metal lay sad, alone,
And the diamond, the garnet, the amethyst,
And the crystal that prisons a purple mist,
Showed lights like my own from each cordial stone[7]
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall,
Shall hinder the rain from attaining the plain,[8]
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 [9] mortally yearn,
And the final [10] main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
And calls through the valleys of Hall.



THE CRYSTAL [11]

At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things--
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound--
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth, and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And muse in that gaunt place,--'twas then my heart,
Deep in the meditative dark, cried out:

Ye companies of governor-spirits grave,
Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news
From steep-walled heavens, holy malcontents,
Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all
That brood about the skies of poesy,
Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars;
Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none
With total luster blazeth, no, not one
But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh
Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks
His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist
Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask
Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give,
We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to meet
Your largess so with love, and interplight
Your geniuses with our mortalities.

Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakspere sole,[12]
A hundred hurts a day I do forgive
('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee):
Small curious quibble; ... Henry's fustian roar
Which frights away that sleep he invocates;[13]
Wronged Valentine's [14] unnatural haste to yield;
Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men
In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise--
Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind;[15]
Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax
Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain.

... Father Homer, thee,
Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes
Of prose and catalogue,[16] thy drear harangues
That tease the patience of the centuries,
Thy sleazy scrap of story,--but a rogue's
Rape of a light-o'-love,[17]--too soiled a patch
To broider with the gods.

Thee, Socrates,[18]
Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive
Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies
That were but dandy upside-down,[19] thy words
Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had manlier wrought.

So, Buddha,[20] beautiful! I pardon thee
That all the All thou hadst for needy man
Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was
But not to be.

Worn Dante,[21] I forgive
The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells
Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed
By death, nor time, nor love.

And I forgive
Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars [22]
Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel,
Immortals smite immortals mortalwise,
And fill all heaven with folly.

Also thee,
Brave Aeschylus,[23] thee I forgive, for that
Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked,
Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love
Stands shining.

So, unto thee, Lucretius [24] mine,
(For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this
That's now complaining?) freely I forgive
Thy logic poor, thine error rich, thine earth
Whose graves eat souls and all.

Yea, all you hearts
Of beauty, and sweet righteous lovers large:
Aurelius [25] fine, oft superfine; mild Saint
A Kempis,[26] overmild; Epictetus,[27]
Whiles low in thought, still with old slavery tinct;
Rapt Behmen,[28] rapt too far; high Swedenborg,[29]
O'ertoppling; Langley,[30] that with but a touch
Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top
Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now,
And most adorable; Caedmon,[31] in the morn
A-calling angels with the cowherd's call
That late brought up the cattle; Emerson,
Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost
Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves
Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice
Since Milton, yet some register of wit
Wanting,--all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked,
Your more or less, your little mole that marks
Your brother and your kinship seals to man.
But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,--
What _if_ or _yet_, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,--
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?[32]



SUNRISE [33]

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.

I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide:
I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide
In your gospeling glooms,[34]--to be
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.
Tell me, sweet burly-barked, man-bodied Tree
That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know
From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?
They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.
Reason's not one that weeps.
What logic of greeting lies
Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss
All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss.
The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan,
So,
(But would I could know, but would I could know,)
With your question embroid'ring the dark of the
question of man,--
So, with your silences purfling this silence of man
While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is
under the ban,
Under the ban,--
So, ye have wrought me
Designs on the night of our knowledge,--yea, ye
have taught me,
So,
That haply we know somewhat more than we know.

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves,
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,[35]
Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me
Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me,--
Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet
That advise me of more than they bring,--repeat
Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath
From the heaven-side bank of the river of death,--
Teach me the terms of silence,--preach me
The passion of patience,--sift me,--impeach me,--
And there, oh there
As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,
Pray me a myriad prayer.[36]

My gossip, the owl,--is it thou
That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough,
As I pass to the beach, art stirred?
Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?

Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea,
Old chemist, rapt in alchemy,
Distilling silence,--lo,
That which our father-age had died to know--
The menstruum that dissolves all matter--thou
Hast found it: for this silence, filling now
The globed clarity of receiving space,
This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace,
Death, love, sin, sanity,
Must in yon silence' clear solution lie.
Too clear! That crystal nothing who'll peruse?
The blackest night could bring us brighter news.
Yet precious qualities of silence haunt
Round these vast margins, ministrant.
Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space,
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race
Just to be fellowed, when that thou hast found
No man with room, or grace enough of bound
To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou art,--
'Tis here, 'tis here, thou canst unhand thy heart
And breathe it free, and breathe it free,
By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams
Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams.
Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies
A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies
Shine scant with one forked galaxy,--
The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie.

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.

But no: it is made: list! somewhere,--mystery,
where?
In the leaves? in the air?
In my heart? is a motion made:
'Tis a motion of dawn, like a nicker of shade on shade.
In the leaves 'tis palpable: low multitudinous stirring
Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring,
Have settled my lord's to be looked for; so; they are still;
But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill,--
And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river,--
And look where a passionate shiver
Expectant is bending the blades
Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades,--
And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting,
Are beating
The dark overhead as my heart beats,--and steady and free
Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea--
(Run home, little streams,
With your lapfuls of stars and dreams),--
And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak,
For list, down the inshore curve of the creek
How merrily flutters the sail,--
And lo, in the East! Will the East unveil?
The East is unveiled, the East hath confessed
A flush: 'tis dead; 'tis alive; 'tis dead, ere the West
Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis withdrawn:
Have a care, sweet Heaven! 'Tis Dawn.

Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled:
To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold
Is builded, in shape as a beehive, from out of the sea:
The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee,
The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee,
Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee
That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea.[37]
Yet now the dewdrop, now the morning gray,
Shall live their little lucid sober day
Ere with the sun their souls exhale away.
Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew
The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue
Big dewdrop of all heaven: with these lit shrines
O'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines,
The sacramental marsh one pious plain
Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign
Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild,
Minded of nought but peace, and of a child.

Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure
Of motion,--not faster than dateless Olympian leisure [38]
Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure,--
The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling,
Forever revealing, revealing, revealing,
Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise,--'tis done!
Good-morrow, lord Sun!
With several voice, with ascription one,
The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul
Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll,
Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun.

O Artisan born in the purple,--Workman Heat,--
Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet
And be mixed in the death-cold oneness,--innermost Guest
At the marriage of elements,--fellow of publicans,--blest
King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest o'er
The idle skies, yet laborest fast evermore,--
Thou in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat
Of the heart of a man, thou Motive,--Laborer Heat:
Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea's all news,
With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues,
Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues,
Ever shaming the maidens,--lily and rose
Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows
In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine,
It is thine, it is thine:

Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl
Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl
In the magnet earth,--yea, thou with a storm for a heart,
Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part
From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light,
Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright
Than the eye of a man may avail of:--manifold One,
I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the Sun:

Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown;
The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town:
But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done;
I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun:
How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run,
I am lit with the Sun.

Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas
Of traffic shall hide thee,
Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories
Hide thee,
Never the reek of the time's fen-politics
Hide thee,
And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee,
And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee,
Labor, at leisure, in art,--till yonder beside thee
My soul shall float, friend Sun,
The day being done.

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