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 principal 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 unsurpassed 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 sublimeThe heroic lives we witness; far and wideStern 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 God,From tears, and blood, and anguish, thou hast broughtThe ennobling act, the faith-sustaining thought—Till, in the marvelous present, one may seeA 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 noble 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 destitute and helpless as himself. Under these disheartening circumstances, 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 shores when winds are low.Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rillThat twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye,Under moist bay leaves, clouds fantasticalThat 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 passed 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 fortitude 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 scopeOf man's endurance—constant, to essayAll 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 ofLegends and Lyricswas issued by Lippincott & Co. It shows the poet's genius in the full power of maturity. His legends are admirably told, andAëthrais 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 retard 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, inDolce far Niente, he says:—
"Let the world roll blindly on!Give me shadow, give me sun,And a perfumed eve as this is:Let me lieDreamfully,Where the last quick sunbeams shiverSpears of light athwart the river,And a breeze, which seems the sighOf a fairy floating by,Coyly kissesTender leaf and feathered grasses;Yet so soft its breathing passes,These tall ferns, just glimmering o'er me,Blending goldenly before me,Hardly quiver!"
The well-known friendship existing between Hayne and his brother poet Timrod was a beautiful one. As schoolboys they had encouraged each other in poetic efforts. As editor ofRussell's Magazine, Hayne had welcomed and praised Timrod's contributions. For the edition of Timrod's poems published in 1873, Hayne prepared a generous and beautiful memoir, in which he quoted the opinion of some Northern writers who assigned the highest place to his friend among the poets of the South. In theLegends and Lyricsthere is a fine poem,Under the Pine, commemorative of Timrod's visit to Copse Hill shortly before his death:—
"O Tree! against thy mighty trunk he laidHis weary head; thy shadeStole o'er him like the first cool spell of sleep:It brought a peacesodeep,The unquiet passion died from out his eyes,As lightnings from stilled skies.
"And in that calm he loved to rest, and hearThe soft wind-angels, clearAnd sweet, among the uppermost branches sighing:Voices he heard replying(Or so he dreamed) far up the mystic height,And pinions rustling light."
As illustrating his rich fancy and graphic power of diction, a few stanzas are given fromCloud Pictures. They are not unworthy of Tennyson in his happiest moments.
"At calm length I lieFronting 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 rangeAt 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 outstreamBanners that wave with motions of a dream—Rising or drooping in the noontide gleam;
"Gray lines of Orient pilgrims: a gaunt bandOn famished camels, o'er the desert sandPlodding 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 barsEarth'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.
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 startsFrom 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 delightIs to scatter ruin far and wide,In thy wantonness of might:For not a leaf that fallethBefore thy restless wings,But in thy flight, thou changest itTo a thousand brighter things.
* * * * *
"'Tis true thy progress layethFull many a loved one low,And for the brave and beautifulThou hast caused our tears to flow;But always near the couch of deathNor thou, nor we can stay;And the breath of thy departing wingsDries 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 boardThe impetuous flood tide pouredOf curbless mirth, and keen sparkling jestVanished 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 theSouthern Literary Messengerof Richmond, Virginia. Later he became one of the principal contributors, both in prose and poetry, toRussell's Magazinein 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 hislivingmerely, but hislifewas 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 addspowerandtruthas 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 willThe 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 ofRussell'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 thesensuous or concretewords of the language, and hence the exclusion of long words, which in English are nearly all purely and austerelyabstract, 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 entitledA 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 hourWhen 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 laughOf 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 shrineLove 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 Pastwas first published in theSouthern 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 hisEthnogenesis—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 typeWhereby we shall be known in every landIs that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand,And through the cold, untempered ocean poursIts genial streams, that far off Arctic shoresMay sometimes catch upon the softened breezeStrange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas."
But his most stirring lyrics areCarolinaandA 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 wavesThat grope their way through sunless caves,Like bodies struggling in their graves,Carolina!
"'And now it deepens; slow and grandIt 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 theLondon 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 theCharleston 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 theSouth 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 forone 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 peepedFrom 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 restnow," 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 hearthTruths wide as nations, and as deep as love."
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."
[Illustration: SIDNEY LANIER.]
This predominance of music in the genius of Lanier is at once the source of his strength and of his weakness in poetry. In his poems, and in his work entitledThe Science of English Verse, it is the musical element of poetry upon which the principal emphasis is laid. This fact makes him the successor of Poe in American letters. Both in theory and in practice Lanier has, as we shall see, achieved admirable results. But, after all, the musical element of poetry is of minor importance. It is a means, and not an end. No jingle of sound can replace the delicacy of fancy, nobleness of sentiment and energy of thought that constitute what we may call the soul of poetry. Rhapsody is not the highest form of poetic achievement. In its noblest forms poetry is the medium through which great souls, like Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, give to the world, with classic self-restraint, the fruitage of their highest thought and emotion.
The life of Lanier was a tragedy. While lighted here and there with a fleeting joy, its prevailing tone was one of sadness. The heroic courage with which he met disease and poverty impart to his life an inspiring grandeur. He was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842. His sensitive spirit early responded to the beauties of Nature; and in his hunting and fishing trips, in which he was usually accompanied by his younger brother Clifford, he caught something of the varied beauties of marsh, wood, and sky, which were afterwards to be so admirably woven into his poems. He early showed a fondness for books, and in the well-stored shelves of his father's library he found ample opportunity to gratify his taste for reading. His literary tastes were doubtless formed on the old English classics—Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Addison—which formed a part of every Southern gentleman's library.
At the age of fifteen he entered the Sophomore class of Oglethorpe College, near Milledgeville, an institution that did not have sufficient vitality to survive the Civil War. He did not think very highly of the course of instruction, and found his chief delight, as perhaps the best part of his culture, in the congenial circle of friends he gathered around him. The evenings he spent with them were frequently devoted to literature and music. A classmate, Mr. T. F. Newell, gives us a vivid picture of these social features of his college life. "I can recall," he says, "my association with him with sweetest pleasure, especially those Attic nights, for they are among the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume, it may have been Tennyson, or Carlyle, or Christopher North'sNoctes Ambrosianoe, or we would make the hours vocal with music and song; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods, and which will be remembered with no other regret than that they will nevermore return. On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony."
Lanier was a diligent student, and easily stood among the first of his classes, particularly in mathematics. His reading took a wide range. In addition to the leading authors of the nineteenth century, he showed a fondness for what was old and quaint in our literature. He delighted in Burton'sAnatomy of Melancholyand in the works of "the poet- preacher," Jeremy Taylor. At this time, too, his thoughtful nature turned to the serious problem of his life work. He eagerly questioned his capabilities as preliminary, to use his own words, "to ascertaining God's will with reference to himself." As already learned from his notebook, he early recognized his extraordinary gifts in music. But his ambition aimed at more than a musician's career, for it seemed to him, as he said, that there were greater things that he might do.
His ability and scholarship made a favorable impression on the college authorities, and immediately after his graduation he was elected to a tutorship. From this position, so congenial to his scholarly tastes, he was called, after six months, by the outbreak of the Civil War. In his boyhood he had shown a martial spirit. With his younger brother he joined the Macon Volunteers, and soon saw heavy service in Virginia. He took part in the battles of Seven Pines, Drewry's Bluffs, and Malvern Hill, in all of which he displayed a chivalrous courage. Afterward he became a signal officer and scout. "Nearly two years," he says, in speaking of this part of his service, "were passed in skirmishes, racing to escape the enemy's gunboats, signaling dispatches, serenading country beauties, poring over chance books, and foraging for provender." In 1864 he became a blockade runner, and in his first run out from near Fort Fisher, he was captured and taken to Point Lookout prison.
It is remarkable that, amid the distractions and hardships of active service, his love of music and letters triumphantly asserted itself. His flute was his constant companion. He utilized the brief intervals of repose that came to him in camp to set some of Tennyson's songs to music and to prosecute new lines of literary study. He took up the study of German, in which he became quite proficient, and by the light of the camp fire at night translated from Heine, Schiller, and Goethe. At the same time his sympathy with the varied aspects of Nature was deepened. Trees and flowers and ferns revealed to him their mystic beauty; and like Wordsworth, he found it easy, "in the lily, the sunset, the mountain, and rosy hues of all life, to trace God."
It was during his campaigns in Virginia that he began the composition of his only novel,Tiger Lilies, which was not completed, however, till 1867. It is now out of print. Though immature and somewhat chaotic, it clearly reveals the imaginative temperament of the author. War is imaged to his mind as "a strange, enormous, terrible flower," which he wishes might be eradicated forever and ever. As might be expected, music finds an honored place in its pages. He regards music as essential to the home. "Given the raw materials," he says, "to wit, wife, children, a friend or two, and a house,—two other things are necessary. These are a good fire and good music. And inasmuch as we can do without the fire for half the year, I may say that music is the one essential. After the evening spent around the piano, or the flute, or the violin, how warm and how chastened is the kiss with which the family all say good night! Ah, the music has taken all the day cares and thrown them into its terrible alembic and boiled them and rocked them and cooled them, till they are crystallized into one care, which is a most sweet and rare desirable sorrow—the yearning for God."
After the war came a rude struggle for existence—a struggle in which tuberculosis, contracted during his camp life, gradually sapped his strength. Hemorrhages became not infrequent, and he was driven from one locality to another in a vain search for health. But he never lost hope; and his sufferings served to bring out his indomitable, heroic spirit, and to stimulate him to the highest degree of intellectual activity. Few men have accomplished more when so heavily handicapped by disease and poverty. The record of his struggle is truly pathetic. In a letter to Paul Hamilton Hayne, written in 1880, he gives us a glimpse both of his physical suffering and his mental agony. "I could never tell you," he says, "the extremity of illness, of poverty, and of unceasing toil, in which I have spent the last three years, and you would need only once to see the weariness with which I crawl to bed after a long day's work, and after a long night's work at the heels of it—and Sundays just as well as other days—in order to find in your heart a full warrant for my silence. It seems incredible that I have printed such an unchristian quantity of matter—all, too, tolerably successful—and secured so little money; and the wife and the four boys, who are so lovely that I would not think a palace good enough for them if I had it, make one's earnings seem all the less." During all these years of toil he longed to be delivered from the hard struggle for bread that he might give himself more fully to music and poetry.
In 1867, while in charge of a prosperous school at Prattville, Alabama, he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Georgia. It proved a union in which Lanier found perpetual inspiration and comfort. His new-found strength and happiness are reflected in more than one of his poems. InAcknowledgmentwe read:—
"By the more height of thy sweet stature grown,Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine,I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown,I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine."
And inMy Springs, he says again, with great beauty:—
"Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete—Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet—I marvel that God made you mine,For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!"
In 1873, after giving up the study of law in his father's office, he went to Baltimore, where he was engaged as first flute for the Peabody Symphony concerts. This engagement was a bold undertaking, which cannot be better presented than in his own words. In a letter to Hayne he says: "Aside from the completebouleversementof proceeding from the courthouse to the footlights, I was a raw player and a provincial withal, without practice, and guiltless of instruction—for I had never had a teacher. To go under these circumstances among old professional players, and assume a leading part in a large orchestra which was organized expressly to play the most difficult works of the great masters, was (now that it's all over) a piece of temerity that I don't remember ever to have equaled before. But I trusted in love, pure and simple, and was not disappointed; for, as if by miracle, difficulties and discouragements melted away before the fire of a passion for music which grows ever stronger within my heart; and I came out with results more gratifying than it is becoming in me to specify." His playing possessed an exquisite charm. "In his hands the flute," to quote from the tribute paid him by his director, "no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration. Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry; they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were, suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees."
Henceforth Baltimore was to be Lanier's home. In addition to music, he gave himself seriously to literature. Before this period he had written a number of poems, limited in range and somewhat labored in manner. The current of his life still set to music, and his poetic efforts seem to have been less a matter of inspiration than of deliberate choice. In literary form the influence of Poe is discernible; but in subject-matter the sounds and colors of Nature, as in the poetry of his later years, occupy a prominent place. Of the poems of this early period the songs forThe Jacquerieare the best. Here is a stanza ofBetrayal:—
"The sun has kissed the violet sea,And burned the violet to a rose.O sea! wouldst thou not better beMore violet still? Who knows? Who knows?Well hides the violet in the wood:The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood,And winter's ill is violet's good;But the bold glory of the rose,It quickly comes and quickly goes—Red petals whirling in white snows,Ah me!"
After taking up his residence in Baltimore, Lanier entered upon a comprehensive course of reading and study, particularly in early English literature. He studied Anglo-Saxon, and familiarized himself with Langland and Chaucer. He understood that any great poetic achievement must be based on extensive knowledge. A sweet warbler may depend on momentary inspiration; but the great singer, who is to instruct and move his age, must possess the insight and breadth of vision that come alone from a profound acquaintance with Nature and human history. With keen critical discernment Lanier said that "the trouble with Poe was, he did notknowenough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet." It was to prepare himself for the highest flights possible to him that he entered, with inextinguishable ardor, upon a wide course of reading.
In 1874 he was commissioned by a railroad company to write up the scenery, climate, and history of Florida. While spending a month or two with his family in Georgia, he wroteCorn, which deservedly ranks as one of his noblest poems. The delicate forms and colors of Nature touched him to an ecstasy of delight; and at the same time they bodied forth to his imagination deep spiritual truths. As we read this poem, we feel that the poet has reached a height of which little promise is given in his earlier poems. Here are the opening lines:—
"To-day the woods are trembling through and throughWith shimmering forms, and flash before my view,Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.The leaves that wave against my cheek caressLike women's hands; the embracing boughs expressA subtlety of mighty tenderness;The copse-depths into little noises start,That sound anon like beatings of a heart,Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.The beach dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song;Through that vague wafture, expirations strongThrob from young hickories breathing deep and longWith stress and urgence bold of prisoned springAnd ecstasy burgeoning."
This poem is remarkable, too, for its presentation of Lanier's conception of the poetic office. The poet should be a prophet and leader, arousing mankind to all noble truth and action:—
"Look, out of line one tall corn-captain standsAdvanced beyond the foremost of his bands,And waves his blades upon the very edgeAnd hottest thicket of the battling hedge.Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk,Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublimeThat leads the vanward of his timid time,And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme—Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to growBy double increment, above, below;Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee,Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalryThat moves in gentle curves of courtesy;Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense.By every godlike senseTransmuted from the four wild elements."
For a time Lanier had difficulty in finding a publisher. He made a visit to New York, but met only with rebuffs. But upheld, like Wordsworth, by a strong consciousness of the excellence of his work, he did not lose his cheerful hope and courage. "The more I am thrown against these people here, and the more reverses I suffer at their hands, the more confident I am of beating them finally. I do not mean by 'beating' that I am in opposition to them, or that I hate them or feel aggrieved with them; no, they know no better and they act up to their light with wonderful energy and consistency. I only mean that I am sure of being able, some day, to teach them better things and nobler modes of thought and conduct."Cornfinally appeared inLippincott's Magazinefor February, 1875.
From this time poetry became a larger part of Lanier's life. His poetic genius had attained to fullness of power. He gave freer rein to imagination and thought and expression. Speaking ofSpecial Pleading, which was written in 1875, he says: "In this little song, I have begun to dare to give myself some freedom in my own peculiar style, and have allowed myself to treat words, similes, and meters with such freedom as I desired. The result convinces me that I can do so now safely." In the next two or three years he produced such notable poems asThe Song of the Chattahoochee,The Symphony,The Revenge of Hamish,Clover,The Bee, andThe Waving of the Corn. They slowly gained recognition, and brought him the fellowship and encouragement of not a few literary people of distinction, among whom Bayard Taylor and Edmund Clarence Stedman deserve especial mention.
Perhaps none of Lanier's poems has been more popular thanThe Song of the Chattahoochee. It does not reach the poetic heights of a few of his other poems, but it is perfectly clear, and has a pleasant lilting movement. Moreover, it teaches the important truth that we are to be dumb to the siren voices of ease and pleasure when the stern voice of duty calls. The concluding stanza is as follows:—
"But oh, not the hills of Habersham,And oh, not the valleys of Hall,Shall hinder the rain from attaining the plain,For downward the voices of duty call—Downward to toil and be mixed with the main.The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn,And a thousand meadows mortally yearn,And the final main from beyond the plainCalls o'er the hills of Habersham,And calls through the valleys of Hall."
In 1876, upon the recommendation of Bayard Taylor, Lanier was invited to write the centennialCantata. As a poem, not much can be said in its favor. Its thought and form fall far below its ambitious conception, in which Columbia presents a meditation on the completed century of our country's history. On its publication it was subject to a good deal of unfavorable criticism; but through it all, though it must have been a bitter disappointment, the poet never lost his faith in his genius and destiny. "The artist shall put forth, humbly and lovingly," he wrote to his father, "and without bitterness against opposition, the very best and highest that is within him, utterly regardless of contemporary criticism. What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to respect—that criticism which crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, and drove Dante into a hell of exile?"
The need of a regular income became more and more a necessity. "My head and my heart," he wrote, "are both so full of poems, which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." He sought various positions—a clerkship in Washington, an assistant's place in the Peabody Library, a consulship in the south of France—all in vain. He lectured to parlor classes in literature—an enterprise from which he seems to have derived more fame than money. Finally, in 1879, he was appointed to a lectureship in English literature in Johns Hopkins University, from which dates the final period of his literary activity and of his life.
The first fruits of this appointment were a series of lectures on metrical forms, which appeared, in 1880, in a volume entitledThe Science of English Verse. It is an original and suggestive work, in which, however, the author's predilections for music carry him too far. He has done well to emphasize the time element in English versification; but his attempt to reduce all forms of verse to a musical notation can hardly be regarded as successful. His work, though comprehensive in scope, was not intended to impose a new set of laws upon the poet. "For the artist in verse," he says in his brief concluding chapter, "there is no law: the perception and love of beauty constitute the whole outfit; and what is herein set forth is to be taken merely as enlarging that perception and exalting that love. In all cases, the appeal is to the ear; but the ear should, for that purpose, be educated up to the highest possible plane of culture."
A second series of lectures, composed and delivered when the anguish of mortal illness was upon him, was subsequently published under the title,The English Novel. Its aim was to trace the development of personality in literature. It contains much suggestive and sound criticism. He did not share the fear entertained by some of his contemporaries, that science would gradually abolish poetry. Many of the finest poems in our language, as he pointed out, have been written while the wonderful discoveries of recent science were being made. "Now," he continues, "if we examine the course and progress of this poetry, born thus within the very grasp and maw of this terrible science, it seems to me that we find—as to thesubstanceof poetry—a steadily increasing confidence and joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness of faith and love and duty and friendship and marriage, and the sovereign fact of man's personality, while as to theformof the poetry, we find that just as science has pruned our faith (to make it more faithful), so it has pruned our poetic form and technic, cutting away much unproductive wood and effloresence, and creating finer reserves and richer yields." Among novelists he assigns the highest place to George Eliot, who "shows man what he maybe in terms of what he is."
There are two poems of this closing period that exhibit Lanier's characteristic manner at its best. They are the high-water mark of his poetic achievement. They exemplify his musical theories of meter. They show the trend forced upon him by his innate love of music; and though he might have written much more, if his life had been prolonged, it is doubtful whether he would have produced anything finer. Any further effort at musical effects would probably have resulted in a kind of ecstatic rhapsody. The first of the poems in question is theMarshes of Glynn, descriptive of the sea marshes near the city of Brunswick, Georgia.
"Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free—Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily wonGod out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain."
The other poem of his closing period,Sunrise, his greatest production, was written during the high fever of his last illness. In the poet's collected works, it is placed first in the series calledHymns of the Marshes. At times it almost reaches the point of ecstasy. His love of Nature finds supreme utterance.
"In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fainOf the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting,Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,Came to the gates of sleep.Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keepOf the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep,Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling:The gates of sleep fell a-tremblingLike as the lips of a lady that forth falteryes,Shaken with happiness:The gates of sleep stood wide.
* * * * *
"Oh, what if a sound should be made!Oh, what if a bound should be laidTo this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring,—To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string!I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleamWill break as a bubble o'erblown in a dream,—Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night,Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light,Oversated with beauty and silence, will seemBut a bubble that broke in a dream,If a bound of degree to this grace be laid,Or a sound or a motion made."
Throughout his artistic life Lanier was true to the loftiest ideals. He did not separate artistic from moral beauty. To his sensitive spirit, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty seemed interchangeable terms. He did not make the shallow cry of "art for art's sake" a pretext or excuse for moral taint. On the contrary, he maintained that all art should be the embodiment of truth, goodness, love. "Can not one say with authority," he inquires in one of his university lectures, "to the young artist, whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character- forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that, unless you are suffused—soul and body, one might say— with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love—that is, the love of all things in their proper relation—unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to meddle with truth; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness. In a word, unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."
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 inThe 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.]
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. InSentinel Songshe says:—
"I sing with a voice too lowTo 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? BetimesThe grandest songs depart,While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymesWill 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. Hisinteriorlife, 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 entitledErin'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 brightWere strangely intermingled. Hours would passRippling with his bright prattle—and then, hoursWould come and go, and never hear a wordFall from his lips, and never see a smileUpon his face. He was so like a cloudWith 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 eyesThat seemed to listen just as if they heldThe 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 metAs 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 tearsFell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each:They were to meet no more. Their hands were claspedTo tear the clasp in twain; and all the starsLooked proudly down on them, while shadows knelt,Or seemed to kneel, around them with the aweEvoked from any heart by sacrifice.And in the heart of that last parting hourEternity 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 prayerWhose 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 inSt. Stephen,The Masters Voice, andA Christmas Chant, but he also finds subjects, not always happily, in distinctive Roman Catholic dogma.The Feast of the AssumptionandThe Last of May, both in honor of the Virgin Mary, are sufficiently poetic; butThe Feast of the Sacred Heartis, 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, andMarch of the Deathless Dead, have been dear to many Southern hearts. He reverenced Lee as a peerless leader.
"Forth from its scabbard! How we prayedThat sword might victor be;And when our triumph was delayed,And many a heart grew sore afraid,We still hoped on while gleamed the bladeOf noble Robert Lee.
"Forth from its scabbard all in vainBright 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 lovedThe Conquered Banner:—
"Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;Broken is its staff and shattered;And the valiant hosts are scatteredOver 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 itNow 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. InThe Land We Lovehe 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 wroteReunited:—
"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 theBanner 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:—