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Poets of the South

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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.

"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 uncollected,
this edition contains his later productions, in which we discover an
increasing seriousness, richness, and depth. The general range of
subjects, as in his earlier volumes, is limited to his 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,
philosopher, 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 feeling 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 feeling 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 ultimate 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:--

"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 writings in prose, and a few of his
choicest lyrics, still remain 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 genius. The Timrods, a
family of German descent, were long identified with the history of South
Carolina. The poet's grandfather belonged to the German Fusiliers of
Charleston, a volunteer company organized in 1775, after the battle of
Lexington, 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
exclusiveness."

[Illustration: HENRY TIMROD.]

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;
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!"

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 Charleston school, where he sat
next to Hayne. He was an ambitious boy, insatiable in his desire for
knowledge; 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, effectually quenching for the time all aesthetic enthusiasm."

When sixteen or seventeen years of age he entered the University of
Georgia. He was cramped 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
literature 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 himself 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
sustained 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 listener, 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 attainments, he never secured this object of his ambition.
Leaving Charleston, he became a tutor in private families; but on holiday
occasions he was accustomed 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 manifested 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 contributor 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, appeared 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 anywhere." It contains most of the pieces found in
subsequent editions of his works. Here and there, both North and South, a
discerning critic recognized 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. Bruns, 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 inspiration, 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 belongs the credit of setting forth a larger and
juster conception of the poetic art. To beauty he adds _power_ and
_truth_ as legitimate sources of poetry. "I think," he says, "when
we recall the many and varied sources of poetry, we must, perforce,
confess that it is wholly impossible to reduce them all to the simple
element of beauty. Two other elements, 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 enforce 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." Accordingly 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 him poetry is more than rhythmic harmony. Beneath his delicate
imagery and rhythmical sweetness are poured treasures of thought and
truth. In diction he belongs to the school of Wordsworth; his language is
not strained or farfetched, 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 imagination, 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 advantage. 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:--

"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 versatile 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."

_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 today; 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
celebrates in a lofty strain the rise of the Confederacy, of which he
cherished large and generous hopes:--

"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."

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 today serve as melancholy mementos of a long-past
sectional bitterness. Of the vigorous lines of the former, Hayne says in
an interesting autobiographic 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 his
influential friends formed the project of bringing 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 sympathetic 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 editor 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. 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
household 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 hand_."

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 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, conversing 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 sweeter than rest_." He died October 7, 1867, and was laid to
rest in Trinity churchyard, where his grave long remained unmarked.

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 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 playmates 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 extraordinary
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 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 civilization, 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 confectionery, 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."

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