Poets of the South | Page 4

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) died before his poetic gifts had reached their full maturity. He was the son of the eminent lawyer and diplomatist, William Pinkney, and was born in London, while his father was American minister at the court of St. James. At the age of nine he was brought home to America, and educated at Baltimore. He spent eight years in the United States navy, during