A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves | Page 2

1881, and his "brilliant and masterly poem was a fitting companion piece to the splendid oration delivered upon that occasion by the renowned orator, Robert C. Winthrop."
This metrical address "Arms and the Man," with various sonnets was published the next year. As the flower of his genius, its noble measures only revealed their full beauty when they fell from the lips of him who framed them, and it was under this spell that one of those who had thronged about him that 19th of October cried out: "Now I understand the power by which the old Greek poets swayed the men of their generation."
Again his State called upon him to weave among her annals the laurels of his verse at the laying of the cornerstone of the monument erected in Richmond to Robert E. Lee. The corner-stone was laid October, 1887, but the poet's voice had been stilled forever. He died September the 15th, as he had often wished to die, "in harness," and at home, and Death came swift and painless.
His poem, save for the after softening touches, had been finished the previous day, and was recited at the appointed time and place by Captain William Gordon McCabe.
"Memori? Sacrum," the Lee Memorial Ode, has been pronounced by many his masterpiece, and waked this noble echo in a brother poet's soul:
'Like those of whom the olden scriptures tell,?Who faltered not, but went on dangerous quest,?For one cool draught of water from the well?With which to cheer their exiled monarch's breast;'
'So thou to add one single laurel more?To our great chieftain's fame--heedless of pain?Didst gather up thy failing strength and pour?Out all thy soul in one last glorious strain.'

"And when the many pilgrims come to gaze?Upon the sculptured form of mighty Lee,?They'll not forget the bard who sang his praise?With dying breath, but deathless melody."
"For on the statue which a country rears,?Tho' graven by no hand, we'll surely see,?E'en tho' it be thro' blinding mists of tears,?Thy name forever linked with that of Lee."
--Rev. Beverly D. Tucker.
His genius had flowered not out of opulence, or congenial occupation, but out of the tread-mill of newspaper life, and under such conditions from 1870-1887 he delivered the poem at Lynchburg's celebration of its founding; at the unveiling of the monument raised to Annie Lee by the ladies of Warren County, North Carolina; memorial odes in Warrenton, Virginia, in Portsmouth, and Norfolk, and at the Virginia Military Institute. He was the first commander of Norfolk's Camp of Confederate Veterans, the Pickett-Buchanan, but through all his stirring lines there breaks no discordant note of hate or rancor. He also sent into print, "Little Stories for Little People," and his novel "Madelon," and delivered among various masterly addresses, "Virginia--Her Past, Present and Future," and "The Press and the Printer's Devil."
During these years he had suffered a physical agony well-nigh past the bearing, but which he bore with a wonderful patience and fortitude, and not only bore, but hid away from those nearest to him. He had brought both broken health and fortunes out of the war; for when in 1861 the people of Hampton left the town,[1] "Its men to join the Southern army, and its women to go in exile for four long weary years, returning thence to find their homes in ashes, James Barron Hope was among the first who left their household gods behind to take up arms for their native State, and he bore his part nobly in the great conflict."
When it ended he did not return to Hampton, or to the practice of his profession. Instead of the law he embarked in journalism in Norfolk, Virginia, and, despite its lack of entire congeniality, made therefrom a career as brilliant as it was fearless and unsullied.
[Footnote: A: "They themselves applying the torch to their own homes under the patriotic, but mistaken idea that they would thus arrest the march of the Invaders." ("Col. Cary's address at unveiling of monument to Captain Hope.")]
Introduction.
He was a little under six feet in height, slender, graceful, and finely proportioned, with hands and feet of distinctive beauty. And his fingers were gifted with a woman's touch in the sick-room, and an artist's grasp upon the pencil and the brush of the water-colorist.
It was said of him that his manner was as courtly as that of "Sir Roger de Coverly." Words which though fitly applied are but as the bare outlines of a picture, for he was the embodiment of what was best in the Old South. He was gifted with a rare charm. There was charm in his pale face, which in conversation flashed out of its deep thoughtfulness into vivid animation. His fine head was crowned with soft hair fast whitening before its time. His eyes shone under his broad white forehead, wise and serene, until his