Poets of the South Part 3

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, a.s.sonance, repet.i.tion, 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, una.s.sociated 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 a.n.a.lysis. _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-sh.e.l.l 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, pa.s.sionate, 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 n.o.bler 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 n.o.bility 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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, ent.i.tled _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 Legare 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.serted, were encountered on every hand. "It may happen to be only a volume of n.o.ble 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 p.r.o.nounced "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 trans.m.u.ted 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 t.i.tle _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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 pa.s.sion'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 princ.i.p.al 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 unsurpa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, From tears, and blood, and anguish, thou hast brought The enn.o.bling 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 n.o.ble 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 dest.i.tute and helpless as himself. Under these disheartening circ.u.mstances, 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 sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.sed 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 fort.i.tude 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 _Aethra_ 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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:--