Poets of the South | Page 4

contributions, he made his paper useful to Southern letters by
encouraging literary activity in others. It was chiefly through his
influence that Louisville became one of the literary centers of the South.
He was a stout opponent of secession; and when the Civil War came
his paper, like his adopted state, suffered severely.
Among his writings is a Life of Henry Clay. A collection of his witty
and pungent paragraphs has also been published under the title of
Prenticeana. His poems, by which he will be longest remembered,
were collected after his death. His best-known poem is The Closing
Year. Though its vividness and eloquence are quite remarkable, its style
is, perhaps, too declamatory for the taste of the present generation. The
following lines, which express the poet's bright hopes for the political
future of the world, are taken from The Flight of Years:--
"Weep not, that Time
Is passing on--it will ere long reveal
A
brighter era to the nations. Hark!
Along the vales and mountains of
the earth
There is a deep, portentous murmuring
Like the swift rush
of subterranean streams,
Or like the mingled sounds of earth and air,

When the fierce Tempest, with sonorous wing,
Heaves his deep
folds upon the rushing winds,
And hurries onward with his night of
clouds
Against the eternal mountains. 'Tis the voice
Of infant
Freedom--and her stirring call
Is heard and answered in a thousand
tones
From every hilltop of her western home----
And lo--it breaks
across old Ocean's flood----
And Freedom, Freedom! is the
answering shout
Of nations starting from the spell of years.
The
dayspring!--see--'tis brightening in the heavens!
The watchmen of the
night have caught the sign----
From tower to tower the signal fires
flash free----
And the deep watchword, like the rush of seas
That

heralds the volcano's bursting flame,
Is sounding o'er the earth. Bright
years of hope
And life are on the wing.--Yon glorious bow
Of
Freedom, bended by the hand of God,
Is spanning Time's dark surges.
Its high arch,
A type of love and mercy on the cloud,
Tells that the
many storms of human life
Will pass in silence, and the sinking
waves,
Gathering the forms of glory and of peace,
Reflect the
undimmed brightness of the Heaven."
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870), a native of Charleston,
was a man of remarkable versatility. He made up for his lack of
collegiate training by private study and wide experience. He early gave
up law for literature, and during his long and tireless literary career was
editor, poet, dramatist, historian, and novelist. He had something of the
wideness of range of Sir Walter Scott; and one can not but think that,
had he lived north of Mason and Dixon's line, he might occupy a more
prominent place in the literary annals of our country. He has been
styled the "Cooper of the South"; but it is hardly too much to say that in
versatility, culture, and literary productiveness he surpassed his great
Northern contemporary.
Simms was a poet before he became a novelist. The poetic impulse
manifested itself early; and before he was twenty-five he had published
three or more volumes of verse. In 1832 his imaginative poem,
Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, was brought out by the Harpers; and it
introduced him at once to the favorable notice of what Poe called the
"Literati" of New York. His subsequent volumes of poetry were
devoted chiefly to a description of Southern scenes and incidents.
As will be seen in our studies of Hayne and Timrod, Simms was an
important figure in the literary circles of Charleston. His large,
vigorous nature seemed incapable of jealousy, and he took delight in
lending encouragement to young men of literary taste and aspiration.
He was a laborious and prolific writer, the number of his various
works-- poetry, drama, history, fiction--reaching nearly a hundred. Had
he written less rapidly, his work might have gained, perhaps, in artistic
quality.

Among the best of Simms's novels is a series devoted to the Revolution.
The characters and incidents of that conflict in South Carolina are
graphically portrayed. The Partisan, the first of this historic series, was
published in 1835. The Yemassee is an Indian story, in which the
character of the red man is less idealized than in Cooper's
_Leatherstocking Tales_. In The Damsel of Darien, the hero is Balboa,
the
discoverer of the Pacific.
The verse of Simms is characterized by facile vigor rather than by fine
poetic quality. The following lines, which represent his style at its best,
bear a lesson for the American people to-day:--
"This the true sign of ruin to a race--
It undertakes no march, and day
by day
Drowses in camp, or, with the laggard's pace,
Walks sentry
o'er possessions that decay;
Destined, with sensible waste, to fleet
away;--
For the first secret of continued power
Is the continued
conquest;--all our sway
Hath surety in the uses of the hour;
If that
we waste, in vain walled town and lofty tower!"
EDWARD COATE PINKNEY (1802-1828)