Poets of the South | Page 3

shall have occasion to note, have frequently gone hand in hand. A recent work on Southern literature [*] enumerates more than twelve hundred writers, most of whom have published one or more volumes. There are more than two hundred poets who have been thought worthy of mention. More than fifty poets have been credited to Virginia alone; and an examination of their works reveals, among a good deal that is commonplace and imitative, many a little gem that ought to be preserved. Apart from the five major poets of the South--Poe, Hayne, Timrod, Lanier, and Ryan--who are reserved for special study, we shall now consider a few of the minor poets who have produced verse of excellent quality. [Footnote *: Manly's Southern Literature.]
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1780-1843) is known throughout the land as the author of The Star-spangled Banner, the noblest, perhaps, of our patriotic hymns. He was born in Frederick County, Maryland, and was educated at St. John's College, Annapolis. He studied law, and after practicing with success in Frederick City, he removed to Washington, where he became district attorney.
During the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, he was detained on board a British vessel, whither he had gone to secure the release of a friend. All night long he watched the bombardment with the keenest anxiety. In the morning, when the dawn disclosed the starspangled banner still proudly waving over the fort, he conceived the stirring song, which at once became popular and was sung all over the country. Though a volume of his poems, with a sketch by Chief-Justice Taney, was published in 1857, it is to The Star-spangled Banner that he owes his literary fame.
"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,?What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
"And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,?Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave?O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
Few poems written in the South have been more popular than _My Life is like the Summer Rose_. It has the distinction of having been praised by Byron. Its author, RICHARD HENRY WILDE (1789-1847), was born in Dublin, Ireland, but brought up and educated in Augusta, Georgia. He studied law, became attorney general of his adopted state, and later entered Congress, where he served for several terms. He was a man of scholarly tastes and poetic gifts. He spent five years abroad, chiefly in Italy, where his studies in Italian literature afterwards led to a work on Torquato Tasso. It was on the occasion of this trip abroad that he wrote A Farewell to America, which breathes a noble spirit of patriotism:--
"Farewell, my more than fatherland!
Home of my heart and friends, adieu!?Lingering beside some foreign strand,
How oft shall I remember you!?How often, o'er the waters blue,?Send back a sigh to those I leave,?The loving and beloved few,?Who grieve for me,--for whom I grieve!"
On his return to America, he settled in New Orleans, where he became a professor of law in the University of Louisiana. Though the author of a volume of poems of more than usual excellence, it is the melancholy lyric, My Life is like the Summer Rose, that, more than all the rest, has given him a niche in the temple of literary fame. Is it necessary to quote a stanza of a poem so well known?
"My life is like the summer rose,?That opens to the morning sky,?But, ere the shades of evening close,?Is scattered on the ground--to die!?Yet on the rose's humble bed?The sweetest dews of night are shed,?As if she wept the waste to see--?But none shall weep a tear for me!"
GEORGE D. PRENTICE (1802-1870) was a native of Connecticut. He was educated at Brown University, and studied law; but he soon gave up his profession for the more congenial pursuit of literature. In 1828 he established at Hartford the New England Weekly Review, in which a number of his poems, serious and sentimental, appeared. Two years later, at the age of twenty-eight, he turned over his paper to Whittier and removed to Louisville, where he became editor of the Journal.
He was a man of brilliant intellect, and soon made his paper a power in education, society, and politics. Apart from his own vigorous 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