Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History BookOpen Original Text rom her childhood's home
By some strange spell, my Katie brought,
Along with English creeds and thought--
Entangled in her golden hair--
Some English sunshine, warmth, and air!
I cannot tell,--but here to-day,
A thousand billowy leagues away
From that green isle whose twilight skies
No darker are than Katie's eyes,
She seems to me, go where she will,
An English girl in England still!
I meet her on the dusty street,
And daisies spring about her feet;
Or, touched to life beneath her tread,
An English cowslip lifts its head;
And, as to do her grace, rise up
The primrose and the buttercup!
I roam with her through fields of cane,
And seem to stroll an English lane,
Which, white with blossoms of the May,
Spreads its green carpet in her way!
As fancy wills, the path beneath
Is golden gorse, or purple heath:
And now we hear in woodlands dim
Their unarticulated hymn,
Now walk through rippling waves of wheat,
Now sink in mats of clover sweet,
Or see before us from the lawn
The lark go up to greet the dawn!
All birds that love the English sky
Throng round my path when she is by:
The blackbird from a neighboring thorn
With music brims the cup of morn,
And in a thick, melodious rain
The mavis pours her mellow strain!
But only when my Katie's voice
Makes all the listening woods rejoice,
I hear--with cheeks that flush and pale--
The passion of the nightingale!
HYMN SUNG AT THE CONSECRATION OF MAGNOLIA CEMETERY, CHARLESTON, S. C.
Whose was the hand that painted thee, O Death!
In the false aspect of a ruthless foe,
Despair and sorrow waiting on thy breath,--
O gentle Power! who could have wronged thee so?
Thou rather should'st be crowned with fadeless flowers,
Of lasting fragrance and celestial hue;
Or be thy couch amid funereal bowers,
But let the stars and sunlight sparkle through.
So, with these thoughts before us, we have fixed
And beautified, O Death! thy mansion here,
Where gloom and gladness--grave and garden--mixed,
Make it a place to love, and not to fear.
Heaven! shed thy most propitious dews around!
Ye holy stars! look down with tender eyes,
And gild and guard and consecrate the ground
Where we may rest, and whence we pray to rise.
FOOTNOTE:
[27] The following extracts are made by permission of Mr. E. J. Hale,
formerly of E. J. Hale & Son.
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.
~1830=1886.~
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE has been justly called the "Laureate of the
South." He was born at Charleston, and being left an orphan by the
death of his father, Lieutenant Hayne of the Navy, he was reared and
educated by his uncle, Robert Young Hayne. His fortune was ample, but
he studied law although he never practised. He became editor of
"Russell's Magazine" and a contributor to the "Southern Literary
Messenger." His genius and lovely nature made him a favorite with all
of his companions, among whom were notably William Gilmore Simms and
Henry Timrod.
During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army; his entire
property, the inheritance of several generations, was destroyed in the
bombardment of Charleston. From 1865 till his death he resided at
"Copse Hill," a small cottage home in the pine hills near Augusta,
Georgia, "keeping the wolf from the door only by the point of his
pen," dearly honored and loved by all who knew him or his poems.
His son, William H. Hayne, is also a poet of much ability, and has
published a volume of "Sylvan Lyrics."
WORKS.
Poems containing Sonnets Avolio Lyrics Mountain of the Lovers.
Preceded by a Sketch of the Poet by Mrs. M. J. Preston (1882).
Life of Robert Young Hayne (1878).
Life of Hugh Swinton Legaré (1878).
[Illustration: ~University of Texas (Main Building), Austin, Texas.~]
"There is no poet in America who has written more lovingly or
discriminatingly about nature in her ever varying aspects. We are sure
that in his loyal allegiance to her, he is not a whit behind
Wordsworth, and we do not hesitate to say that he has often a grace
that the old Lake-poet lacks."--Mrs. Preston.
"Hayne has the lyric gift, and his shorter poems have a ring and
richness that recall the glories of the Elizabethan period; . . . each
shows the same careful and artistic workmanship."--Collier.
THE MOCKING-BIRD.
(_At Night._)
(_From Poems, 1882._[28])
A golden pallor of voluptuous light
Filled the warm southern night;
The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene
Moved like a stately Queen,
So rife with conscious beauty all the while,
What could she do but smile
At her own perfect loveliness below,
Glassed in the tranquil flow
Of crystal fountains and unruffled streams?
Half lost in waking dreams,
As down the loneliest forest dell I strayed,
Lo! from a neighboring glade,
Flashed through the drifts of moonshine, swiftly came
A fairy shape of flame.
It rose in dazzling spirals overhead,
Whence, to wild sweetness wed,
Poured marvellous melodies, silvery trill on trill;
The very leaves grew still
On the charmed trees to hearken; while, for me,
Heart-thrilled to ecstasy,
I followed--followed the bright shape that flew,
Still circling up the blue,
Till, as a fountain that has reached its height
Falls back in sprays of light
Slowly dissolved, so that enrapturing lay,
Divinely melts away
Through tremulous spaces to a music-mist,
Soon by the fitful breeze
How gently kissed
Into remote and tender silences.
SONNET.--OCTOBER.
The passionate summer's dead! the sky's aglow
With roseate flushes of matured desire,
The winds at eve are musical and low,
As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre,
Far up among the pillared clouds of fire,
Whose pomp of strange procession upward rolls,
With gorgeous blazonry of pictured scrolls,
To celebrate the summer's past renown;
Ah, me! how regally the heavens look down,
O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods
And harvest fields with hoarded increase brown,
And deep-toned majesty of golden floods,
That raise their solemn dirges to the sky,
To swell the purple pomp that floateth by.
A DREAM OF THE SOUTH WIND.
O fresh, how fresh and fair
Through the crystal gulfs of air,
The fairy South Wind floateth on her subtle wings of balm!
And the green earth lapped in bliss,
To the magic of her kiss
Seems yearning upward fondly through the golden-crested calm.
From the distant Tropic strand
Where the billows, bright and bland,
Go creeping, curling round the palms with sweet, faint undertune;
From its fields of purpling flowers
Still wet with fragrant showers,
The happy South Wind lingering sweeps the royal blooms of June.
All heavenly fancies rise
On the perfume of her sighs,
Which steep the inmost spirit in a languor rare and fine,
And a peace more pure than sleep's
Unto dim half-conscious deeps,
Transports me, lulled and dreaming, on its twilight tides divine.
Those dreams! ah, me! the splendor,
So mystical and tender,
Wherewith like soft heat lightnings they gird their meaning round,
And those waters, calling, calling,
With a nameless Previous Next |