American Poetry and Fiction Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 Excerpt: ...dwindled to that of occasional lines or passages; but when he sang his own song in his own land it was that of a true poet, who heard "Low words of alien music, softly sung. And rhythmic sighs in some sweet unknown tongue." Far from the distributing centres of literature, and unaided by the stimulus or the criticism that come alone from association with brother authors, Hayne wrote too much, nor polished with sufficiently painstaking art. Hard, too, is the lot of the bard whose whole life is devoted to letters in a lonely land. I do not think, however, that deductions and limitations of excess or of failure can deny the poet's crown to him who wrote "Lethe," "Under Sentence," " Above the Storm," "Pre-existence," "Underground," "The Dryad of the Pine," "The Pine's Mystery," "Love's Autumn," "The Vision at Twilight," "The Inevitable Calm," "The Dead Look," "Over the Waters," "Forecastings," "The Visionary Face," the sonnets "At Last" and "Earth Odors after Rain," and the dramatic sketch "Antonio Melidori." Another characteristic poet in Georgia was Henry Timrod, whose poems Hayne edited. His little book of Verse is SO good in its Henry Timrod, martial and general work, that it 1829-1867. makes us speculate on the possibilities which might have come in a longer life of one whose inspiration was so vivid that he half expected the incarnate spirit of springtide to appear in rosy flesh before him, in his woodland walks, exclaiming, "Behold me I am May I" The poetry of a third Confederate, Sidney Lanier, is dear to an audience fit and now more than few, which often cherishes t...