A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Poets of the South

F >> F.V.N. Painter >> Poets of the South




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 fantastic tales, for which he was poorly paid, and
to do editorial work, by which he eked out a scanty livelihood. 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 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 'Nevermore'; 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 Poe was associated with the management of the _Broadway
Journal_, which in a few months passed entirely into his hands. He had
long desired to control a periodical of his own, and in Philadelphia 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 occasional lapse into
contemptuous and exasperating severity.

In the same year he published a tolerably complete 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_, _The
Conqueror Worm_, _The City in the Sea_, _Eulalie_, and
_Israfel_. Rarely 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
desolate 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!)
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
contradiction 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 impression. His poetry aims at beauty in a purely artistic sense,
unassociated with truth or morals. It is, for the most part, singularly
vague, unsubstantial, 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 perusal--its meaning lost in a haze of mist and music. Yet
these poems, when read in a sympathetic 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 instrumental 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,
affectionate, invalid wife, whom in her fourteenth year he had married in
Richmond. According to Griswold, "His conversation was at times almost
supramortal 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
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, except 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 subsequent literary
work deserves scarcely more than mere mention. His _Eureka_, an
ambitious treatise, the immortality of which he confidently predicted,
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, loneliness, and sorrow, he
resorted to stimulants with increasing frequency. Their terrible work was
soon done. On his return from a visit to Richmond, 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 depressing as one of his own
morbid, fantastic tales. His career leaves a painful sense of
incompleteness 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 unhealthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression in
the maddening poem, _The 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."




[Illustration: PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.]

CHAPTER III

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE


The poetry of Paul Hamilton Hayne is characterized 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 refinement. 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 affiliations 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 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 appreciative words and ambitious hopes. Hayne's
poems are full of autobiographic elements; and in one, entitled _To My
Mother_, 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 1,
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 and Legaré 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 connection with several
periodicals. He was a favorite contributor to the _Southern Literary
Messenger_, for many years published in Richmond, Virginia, 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 honorable career of two years.

An article in _Russell's Magazine_ for August, 1857, elaborately
discusses the ante-bellum discouragements to authorship in the South.
Indifference, 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 Southern 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 independence of judgment, though not in ferocity of style,
he resembled Poe. He prided himself on conscientious loyalty to literary
art. He disclaimed all sympathy with that sectional spirit which has
sometimes lauded a work merely for geographical reasons; and in the
critical reviews of his magazine 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 appear in his _Complete
Poems_. This severity of self-criticism, which exacted sincerity of
utterance, has imparted a rare average excellence to his work.

In 1852 he married Miss Mary Middleton Michel, of Charleston, the
daughter of a distinguished 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, _The Bonny Brown Hand_, there is a
reflection of the love that glorified the toil and ills of this later
period:--

"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 peaceful 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 _Southern Literary Messenger_, _Russsell's
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
dedication, he reminds us of Longfellow, Tennyson, 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 treatment 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 frequently chose
the sonnet as the medium for expressing his choicest thought. It is
hardly too much to claim that Hayne is the prince of American sonneteers.
The late Maurice Thompson said that he could pick out twenty of Hayne's
sonnets equal to almost any others in our language. 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 worshiper of beauty; and the
singleness of this devotion gives him his distinctive place in our poetic
annals.

"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 balsamed pain."

The great civil conflict of '61-'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 reformer or partisan leader.
But nowhere else do we find a heart more sensitive to grandeur of
achievement or pathos of incident. He recognized the unsurpassed heroism
of sentiment and achievement 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 beautiful 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 circumstances, rendered still more
gloomy by the ruthless deeds of reconstruction, he withdrew to the pine
barrens of Georgia, where, eighteen miles from 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, reflecting credit on American letters, and
earning for him a high place among American poets, were written.

This modest home, which from its steep hillside--

"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 interesting light upon the poet's
methods of composition. Physical movement seemed favorable to his poetic
faculty; and many of his pieces were composed as he paced to and fro in
his study, or walked with stooping shoulders beneath the trees
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 spontaneously 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. Gradually 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 commensurate 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 _Aëthra_ is a gem of its kind. But the
richness of Hayne's imagination was better suited to lyric than to
narrative or dramatic poetry. The latter, indeed, abounds in rare beauty
of thought and expression; but somehow this luxuriance seems to retard or
obscure the movement. The lyric pieces of this volume are full of self-
revelation, autobiography, and Southern landscape. 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!"

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 Timrod's contributions. For the edition of Timrod's
poems published in 1873, Hayne prepared a generous 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."

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.