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Poets of the South

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Through these years of high aspiration and manly endeavor, the poet and
musician was waging a losing fight with consumption. He was finally
driven to tent life in a high, pure atmosphere as his only hope. He first
went to Asheville, North Carolina, and a little later to Lynn. But his
efforts to regain his health proved in vain; and on the 7th of September,
1881, the tragic struggle was brought to a close.

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




[Illustration: FATHER RYAN.]

CHAPTER VI

ABRAM J. RYAN


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

"I sing with a voice too low
To be heard beyond to-day,
In minor keys of my people's woe,
But my songs pass away.

"To-morrow hears them not--
To-morrow belongs to fame--
My songs, like the birds', will be forgot,
And forgotten shall be my name.

"And yet who knows? Betimes
The grandest songs depart,
While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes
Will echo from heart to heart."

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

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

"Lift it up! lift it up! the old Banner of Green!
The blood of its sons has but brightened its sheen;
What though the tyrant has trampled it down,
Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown?"

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

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

When his preliminary training was ended, he entered the Roman Catholic
seminary at Niagara, New York. He was moved to the priesthood by a spirit
of deep consecration. The writer of his memoir dwells on the regret with
which he severed the ties binding him to home. No doubt he loved and
honored his parents. But there was a still stronger attachment, which,
broken by his call to the priesthood, filled all his subsequent life with
a consecrated sorrow. It was his love for Ethel:--

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

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

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

The Roman Catholic training and faith of Father Ryan exerted a deep
influence upon his poetry. His ardent studies in the ancient languages
and in scholastic theology naturally withdrew his mind, to a greater or
less degree, from intimate communion with Nature. His poetry is
principally subjective. Nature enters it only in a subordinate way; its
forms and sounds and colors do not inspire in him the rapture found in
Hayne and Lanier. He not only treats of Scripture themes, as in _St.
Stephen_, _The Masters Voice_, and _A Christmas Chant_, but
he also finds subjects, not always happily, in distinctive Roman Catholic
dogma. _The Feast of the Assumption_ and _The Last of May_,
both in honor of the Virgin Mary, are sufficiently poetic; but _The
Feast of the Sacred Heart_ is, in parts, too prosaically literal in
its treatment of transubstantiation for any but the most believing and
devout of Roman Catholics.

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

"Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed
That sword might victor be;
And when our triumph was delayed,
And many a heart grew sore afraid,
We still hoped on while gleamed the blade
Of noble Robert Lee.

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

After four years of brave, bitter sacrifice beneath the Confederate flag,
words like the following appealed strongly to the men and women who loved
_The Conquered Banner_:--

"Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;
Broken is its staff and shattered;
And the valiant hosts are scattered
Over whom it floated high.
Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it;
Hard to think there's none to hold it;
Hard that those who once unrolled it
Now must furl it with a sigh.

"Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,
Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory.
And 'twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust:
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages--
Furl its folds though now we must."

Father Ryan's devotion to the South was intense. He long refused to
accept the results of the war. The wrongs of the so-called Reconstruction
period aroused his ardent indignation, and found expression in his song.
In _The Land We Love_ he says, with evident reference to those
days:--

"Land where the victor's flag waves,
Where only the dead are the free!
Each link of the chain that enslaves,
But binds us to them and to thee."

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

"Purer than thy own white snow,
Nobler than thy mountains' height;
Deeper than the ocean's flow,
Stronger than thy own proud might;
O Northland! to thy sister land,
Was late thy mercy's generous deed and grand."

After the close of the Civil War, the restless temperament of the poet-
priest asserted itself in numerous changes of residence. He was
successively in Biloxi, Mississippi, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Augusta,
Georgia. In the latter place he published for some three years the
_Banner of the South_, a periodical that exerted no small influence
on the thought of the state. In 1870 he became pastor of St. Mary's
church in Mobile. Two years later he made a trip to Europe, of which we
find interesting reminiscences in his poems. His visit to Rome was the
realization of a long-cherished desire. He was honored with an audience
by Pope Pius IX, of whom he has given a graphic sketch:--

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

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

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

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

"Do you ask me the place of the Valley,
Ye hearts that are harrowed by care?
It lieth afar between mountains,
And God and His angels are there:
And one is the dark mount of Sorrow,
And one the bright mountain of Prayer."

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

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

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

"For every one: no matter who--
Or what their lot--or high or low;
All hearts have clouds--but heaven's blue
Wraps robes of bright around each woe;
And this is truest of the true:

"That joy is stronger here than grief,
Fills more of life, far more of years,
And makes the reign of sorrow brief;
Gives more of smiles for less of tears.
Joy is life's tree--grief but its leaves."

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

"They are all dreamers; in the day and night
Ever across their souls
The wondrous mystery of the dark or bright
In mystic rhythm rolls.

"They live within themselves--they may not tell
What lieth deepest there;
Within their breast a heaven or a hell,
Joy or tormenting care.

"They are the loneliest men that walk men's ways,
No matter what they seem;
The stars and sunlight of their nights and days
Move over them in dream."

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

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

With this view of Nature, it was but natural that its sounds and forms--
its birds and flowers--should inspire devotion. In _St. Mary's_,
speaking of the songs and silences of Nature, he says:--

"God comes close to me here--
Back of ev'ry roseleaf there
He is hiding--and the air
Thrills with calls to holy prayer;
Earth grows far, and heaven near.

"Every single flower is fraught
With the very sweetest dreams,
Under clouds or under gleams
Changeful ever--yet meseems
On each leaf I read God's thought."

It can hardly be said that Father Ryan ever reaches far poetic heights.
Neither in thought nor expression does he often rise above cultured
commonplace. Fine artistic quality is supplanted by a sort of melodious
fluency. Yet the form and tone of his poetry, nearly always in one
pensive key, make a distinct impression, unlike that of any other
American singer. "Religious feeling," it has been well said, "is
dominant. The reader seems to be moving about in cathedral glooms, by
dimly lighted altars, with sad procession of ghostly penitents and
mourners fading into the darkness to the sad music of lamenting choirs.
But the light which falls upon the gloom is the light of heaven, and amid
tears and sighs, over farewells and crushed happiness, hope sings a
vigorous though subdued strain." Having once caught his distinctive note
of weary melancholy, we can recognize it among a chorus of a thousand
singers. It is to his honor that he has achieved a distinctive place in
American poetry.

His poetic craftsmanship is far from perfect. His artistic sense did not
aspire to exquisite achievements. He delighted unduly in alliteration,
assonance, and rhyming effects, all which he sometimes carried to excess.
In the first stanza, for example, of _The Conquered Banner_, popular
as it is, the rhyme effect seems somewhat overdone:--

"Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary;
Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary;
Furl it, fold it, it is best;
For there's not a man to _wave it_,
And there's not a sword to _save it_,
And there's not one left to _lave it_
In the blood which heroes _gave it_;
And its foes now scorn and _brave it_;
Furl it, hide it--let it rest."

Here and there, too, are unmistakable echoes of Poe, as in the following
stanza from _At Last:_--

"Into a temple vast and dim,
_Solemn and vast and dim_,
Just when the last sweet Vesper Hymn
Was floating far away,
With eyes that tabernacled tears--
_Her heart the home of tears_--
And cheeks wan with the woes of years,
A woman went one day."

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

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

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

"It is a truth beyond our ken--
And yet a truth that all may read--
It is with roses as with men,
The sweetest hearts are those that bleed.

"The flower which Bethlehem saw bloom
Out of a heart all full of grace,
Gave never forth its full perfume
Until the cross became its vase."

Then again, the poet-priest, as was becoming his character, deals with
the mysteries of life. Much of our recent poetry is as trifling in theme
as it is polished in workmanship. But Father Ryan habitually brings
before us the profounder and sadder aspects of life. The truths of
religion, the vicissitudes of human destiny, the tragedy of death--these
are the themes in which he finds his inspiration, and to which we all
turn in our most serious moments. And though the strain in which he sings
is attuned to tears, it is still illumined by a strength-giving faith and
hope. When we feel weighed down with a sense of pitiless law, when fate
seems to cross our holiest aspirations with a ruthless hand, he bids us
be of good cheer.

"There is no fate--God's love
Is law beneath each law,
And law all laws above
Fore'er, without a flaw."

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

"My feet are wearied, and my hands are tired,
My soul oppressed--
And I desire, what I have long desired--
Rest--only rest.

* * * * *

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

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




ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS WITH NOTES


SELECTION FROM FRANCIS SCOTT KEY

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER [1]

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts [2] we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, [3]
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more? [4]
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto--_"In God is our trust:"_
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[Footnote 1: For a brief statement of the circumstances that gave rise to
the poem, see sketch of Key, page 12.]

[Footnote 2: Fort McHenry, on the north bank of the Patapsco, below
Baltimore, was attacked by the British fleet, September 13, 1814.]

[Footnote 3: The attack being unsuccessful, the British became
disheartened and withdrew.]

[Footnote 4: Before the attack upon Baltimore, the British had taken
Washington and burned the capitol and other public buildings.

With this poem may be compared other martial lyrics, such as Hopkinson's
_Hail Columbia_, Mrs. Howe's _Battle Hymn of the Republic_,
Campbell's _Ye Mariners of England_ and _Battle of the Baltic_,
Tennyson's _Charge of the Light Brigade_, etc.]



* * * * *


SELECTIONS FROM RICHARD HENRY WILDE

STANZAS [1]

My life is like the summer rose,
That opens to the morning sky,
But, ere the shades of evening close,
Is scattered on the ground--to die![2]
Yet on the rose's humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see--
But none shall weep a tear for me!

My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon's pale ray:
Its hold is frail--its date is brief,
Restless--and soon to pass away!
Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree--
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!

My life is like the prints, which feet
Have left on Tampa's [3] desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,
All trace will vanish from the sand;
Yet, as if grieving to efface
All vestige of the human race,
On that lone shore loud moans the sea--
But none, alas! shall mourn for me!

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