Poets of the South | Page 6

Hayne, who edited a volume of Ticknor's poems, he was "one
of the truest and sweetest lyric poets this country has yet produced."
_The Virginians of the Valley_ was written after the soldiers of the Old
Dominion, many of whom bore the names of the knights of the
"Golden Horseshoe," had obtained a temporary advantage over the
invading forces of the North:--
"We thought they slept!--the sons who kept
The names of noble sires,

And slumbered while the darkness crept
Around their vigil fires;

But aye the 'Golden Horseshoe' knights
Their Old Dominion keep,

Whose foes have found enchanted ground,
But not a knight asleep."
But a martial lyric of greater force is Little Giffen, written in honor of a
blue-eyed lad of East Tennessee. He was terribly wounded in some
engagement, and after being taken to the hospital at Columbus, Georgia,
was finally nursed back to life in the home of Dr. Ticknor. Beneath the
thin, insignificant exterior of the lad, the poet discerned the incarnate
courage of the hero:--

"Out of the focal and foremost fire,
Out of the hospital walls as dire;

Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene,
(Eighteenth battle and he
sixteen!)
Specter! such as you seldom see,
Little Giffen of
Tennessee!

"Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnson pressed at the front,
they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear--his first--as he
bade good-by,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
'I'll write, if
spared!' There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.--He did not
write."
But Ticknor did not confine himself to war themes. He was a lover of
Nature; and its forms, and colors, and sounds--as seen in _April
Morning_, Twilight_, _The Hills_, _Among the Birds--appealed to his
sensitive nature. Shut out from literary centers and literary
companionship, he sang, like Burns, from the strong impulse awakened
by the presence of the heroic and the beautiful.
JOHN R. THOMPSON (1823-1873) has deserved well of the South
both as editor and author. He was born in Richmond, and educated at
the University of Virginia, where he received the degree of Bachelor of
Arts in 1845. Two years later he became editor of the _Southern
Literary Messenger_; and during the twelve years of his editorial
management, he not only maintained a high degree of literary
excellence, but took pains to lend encouragement to Southern letters. It
is a misfortune to our literature that his writings, particularly his poetry,
have never been collected.
The incidents of the Civil War called forth many a stirring lyric, the
best of which is his well-known Music in Camp:--
"Two armies covered hill and plain,
Where Rappahannock's waters
Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain

Of battle's recent slaughters."

The band had played "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle," which in turn had
been greeted with shouts by "Rebels" and "Yanks."
"And yet once more the bugles sang
Above the stormy riot;
No shout upon the evening rang--
There
reigned a holy quiet.
"The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood
Poured o'er the glistening pebbles;
All silent now the Yankees stood,

And silent stood the Rebels.
"No unresponsive soul had heard
That plaintive note's appealing,
So deeply 'Home, Sweet Home' had
stirred
The hidden founts of feeling.
"Or Blue or Gray, the soldier sees,
As by the wand of fairy,
The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees,
The
cabin by the prairie."
On account of failing health, Thompson made a visit to Europe, where
he spent several years, contributing from time to time to _Blackwood's
Magazine_ and other English periodicals. On his return to America, he
was engaged on the editorial staff of the New York Evening Post, with
which he was connected till his death, in 1873. He is buried in
Hollywood cemetery at Richmond.
"The city's hum drifts o'er his grave,
And green above the hollies
wave
Their jagged leaves, as when a boy,
On blissful summer
afternoons,
He came to sing the birds his runes,
And tell the river of
his joy."
The verse of Mrs. MARGARET J. PRESTON (1820-1897) rises above
the commonplace both in sentiment and craftsmanship. She belongs, as

some critic has said, to the school of Mrs. Browning; and in range of
subject and purity of sentiment she is scarcely inferior to her great
English contemporary. She was the daughter of the Rev. George Junkin,
D.D., the founder of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, and for many
years president of Washington College at Lexington, Virginia. In 1857
she married Colonel J. T. L. Preston of the Virginia Military Institute.
For many years she was a contributor to the _Southern Literary
Messenger_, in which her earlier poems first made their appearance.
Though a native of Philadelphia, she was loyal to the South during the
Civil War, and found inspiration in its deeds of heroism. Beechenbrook
is a rhyme of the war; and though well-nigh forgotten now, it was read,
on its publication in 1865, from the Potomac to the Gulf. Among her
other writings are Old Songs and New_ and