A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves | Page 3

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 dauntless spirit, or his lofty
enthusiasm awoke to fire their grey depths. His was a face that women
trusted and that little children looked up into with smiles. Those whom
he called friend learned the meaning of that name, and he drew and
linked men to him from all ranks and conditions of life.
Beloved by many, those who guard his memory coin the very fervor of
their hearts into the speech with which they link his name. "A very
Chevalier Bayard" he was called.

Of him was quoted that noble epitaph on the great Lord Fairfax:
'Both sexes' virtues in him combined,
He had the fierceness of the
manliest mind,
And all the meekness too of woman kind.'
'He never knew what envy was, nor hate,
His soul was filled with
worth and honesty,
And with another thing quite out of date, called
modesty.'
No sketch could approach justice toward Captain Hope without at least
a brief review of his domestic life.
In 1857 he had married Miss Annie Beverly Whiting of Hampton. Hers
were the face and form to take captive his poet's fancy, and she
possessed a character as lovely as her person; a courage and strength of
will far out of proportion to her dainty shape, and an intellect of
masculine robustness. Often the editor brought his work to the table of
his library that he might avail himself of his wife's judgment, and labor
with the faces around him that he loved, for their union was a very
congenial one, and when two daughters came to bless it, as husband
and father, he poured out the treasures of his heart, his mind and soul.
To his children he was a wise teacher, a tender guide, an unfailing
friend, the most delightful of companions. His sympathy for and his
understanding of young people never aged, and he had a circle of dear
and familiar friends of varying ages that gathered about him once a
week. There, beside his own hearth, his ready wit, his kindly humor
sparkled most brightly, and there flowed forth most evenly that speech
accounted by many well worth the hearing. For his was also the art of
listening; he not only led the expression of thought, but inspired it in
others. His own roof-tree looked down upon James Barron Hope at his
best and down upon a home in the sacred sense of the word, for he
touched with poetry the prose of daily living, and left to those who
loved him the blessed legacy of a memory which death cannot take
from them.
I have said that in his early years Old Hampton claimed him. He
became the son of the city of his adoption and sleeps among her dead.

Above his ashes rises a shaft, fashioned from the stones of the State he
loved so well which proclaims that it is "The tribute of his friends
offered to the memory of the Poet, Patriot, Scholar, and Journalist and
the Knightly Virginia Gentleman."
JANEY HOPE MARR,
LEXINGTON, VA.
INDEX.
The Charge at Balaklava
A Short Sermon
A Little Picture
A
Reply to a Young Lady
A Story of the Caracas Valley
Three
Summer Studies
The Washington Memorial Ode
How it Fell Calm
on Summer Night
A Friend of Mine
Indolence
The Jamestown
Anniversary Ode
An Elegiac Ode
The Cadets at New Market
Our
Heroic Dead
Mahone's Brigade
The Portsmouth Memorial
Poem--The Future Historian
Arms and The Man
Prologue
The
Dead Statesman
The Colonies
The New England Group
The
Southern Colonies
The Old Dominion
The Oaks and the Tempest

The Embattled Colonies
Welcome to France
The Allies at
Yorktown
The Ravages of War
The Lines Around Yorktown
The
French in the Trenches
Nelson and the Gunners
The Beleaguered
Town
Storming the Redoubts
The Two Leaders
The Beginning of
the End
The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
Our Ancient Allies

The Continentals
The Marquis
The Ancient Enemies

The
Splendid Three
The War Horse Draws the Plough
Heroes and
Statesmen
Pater Patriæ
The Flag of the Republic
The South in the
Union
To Alexander Galt, the Sculptor
To the Poet-Priest Ryan

Three Names
Sir Walter Raleigh
Captain John Smith
Pocahontas

Sunset on Hampton Roads
A King's Gratitude
"The Twinses"

Dreamers
Under One Blanket
The Lee Memorial Ode
[ILLUSTRATION]

A WREATH OF VIRGINIA BAY LEAVES.
THE CHARGE AT BALAKLAVA.
Nolan halted where the squadrons,
Stood impatient of delay,
Out he
drew his brief dispatches,
Which their leader quickly snatches,
At a
glance their meaning catches;
They are ordered to the fray!
All that morning they had waited--
As their frowning faces showed,

Horses stamping, riders fretting,
And their teeth together setting;

Not a single sword-blade wetting
As the battle ebbed and flowed.
Now the fevered spell is broken,
Every man feels twice as large,

Every heart is fiercely leaping,
As a lion roused from sleeping,
For
they know they will be sweeping
In a moment to the charge.
Brightly gleam six hundred sabres,
And the brazen trumpets ring;

Steeds are