THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY. VOL. I. NO. 4. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE. “IN N the month of December, 1844, died, near Columbus, Georgia, one of the truest and sweetest lyric poets this country has yet produced." So wrote Paul Hamilton Hayne in his introduction to the poems of his beloved brother poet, Frank O. Ticknor, and as I read it I thought the sympathetic artist had unconsciously drawn in it a picture of himself. The best biography of Col. Hayne that has been or is likely to be written, is the poet's "Life of Henry Timrod." That essay is one of the most beautiful and sympathetic in the language, for in portraying the poetic nature of Timrod, we see the tender, luminous and inspired soul of Hayne himself by reflection, the same as we see the lovely spirit of Robert Southey in the "Life of Cowper." Would you know the inner heart of Hayne, read his "Life of Henry Timrod." We first met Col. Hayne in Boston, after the war had ruined his fortune, and destroyed his health. It was some years before his death, but the fever of consumption was already kindling and renewing its fires. He had been to the White Hills, N. H., for his health, and his heart had been greatly elated while there amid the tonic air, but only to be depressed again by a hemorrhage on Lake Winnipisiogee. I well recall his fine intellectual and spiritual face, his officer-like bearing, his wonderful talk, his aspirations, and the expression of his sensitive sou in verse that flowed almost daily from his pen; his visit to Whittier, and his views of religious things which he unfolded to me on a Sunday walk to Trinity church. To have met him at that time was to cherish a most wonderful memory; sickness had mellowed his spirit, and brought to it an almost celestial light; his thoughts had the tinge of the future, and the passing clouds were celestial chariots. The last time that I met him, was at his cottage home at Copse Hill, Georgia, a few months before his death. It was a March evening, and he had recently sent to Harper's Magazine his last representative poem, "Face to Face." The fevers of consumption had long burned, and they had now nearly changed to ashes the fuel of life. me privately that he would soon die, and said that only for the sake of his beloved wife and son he would be in a hurry to go. His Christian faith lifted him, and he felt no fear. He desired to read to me his poem "Face to Face." "I wish the world to know," he said, "that this is my view of death, as a dying man." His careful wife feared that it might be too much for his strength for him to read the poem aloud. But he insisted upon doing it. I can see him now as he stood that evening before the blazing logs of the open fire, and read that wonderful and beautiful soul analysis, a poem that ought to be forever quoted when one writes of him. If the last poems of the great poet should ever be collected, "Face to Face," would stand 'distinct among them all. It is a tender heroism, a beautiful spirituality, a brushing of the unimprisoned wing against the rays of the eternal morning. The effect of the reading injured him; he was not able to rise on the following morning. Paul H. Hayne was born in Charleston, South Carolina, January 1st, 1830. His ancestors were distinguished both in England and in the colonial history of the Carolinas. The famous orator and statesman, Robert Y. Hayne, governor and United States Senator, was his uncle. He was graduated from Charleston College. He was a poet from youth. The Attic bees hummed about his cradle by the southern sea, and like Cowley, he "lisped in numbers." He was early brought under the influence of William Gilmore Simms, the novelist and poet, the Fenimore Cooper of the South. There was a distinct literary period in Charleston at this time, as distinct as that of Boston in the early days of the Atlantic Monthly. Simms was the leader of it; Calhoun entered into it; Legaré, Timrod and Hayne were its principal members. The literary coterie established a magazine, and young Hayne was appointed the editor. So his literary life began, a life whose influence for good was destined to be felt in every American household. His first volume of poems was published by the old house of Ticknor & Co., Boston, when he was twenty-five years of age. His poetry now began He told to enter into magazine literature, and collection Copyright, 1889, by CHARLES WELLS MOULTON, All rights reserved. after collection was made. The war came. Col. Hayne became an aid of Gov. Pickens, and a member of his staff. During the bombardment of Charleston, his beautiful home and its valuable library were destroyed. The war left poor the long enriched, family. Col. Hayne's health began to be seriously impaired, and he built him a cottage in the seclusion of the pine barrens at Copse Hill, near Augusta, Ga., at Groveton, where the work of his last years was done. Col. Hayne was blessed with a true, noble and sympathetic wife, who was the heart of his life, and who entered into all of his work with clear judgment and appreciative sympathy. Her maiden name was Mary Middleton Michel, a name well known among the most honored families of the South. She was the daughter of a French Huguenot, who rendered distinguished services as a physician to the French army under Napoleon. She still lives at Copse Hill, Ga. She is a clear-sighted but generous critic of the literature of the times, especially of poetry. She will ever be beloved by the public for what she was to the poet in both his prosperity and in the days of his altered fortune. Col. Hayne's only son, the well known poet William H. Hayne, who inherits his father's insights of nature and culture in art, lives with his mother at Copse Hill. Paul H. Hayne is the representative poet of the South, the Longfellow of the new land of literary inspiration and art. He will always hold this place among the poets of the past. He thoroughly believed in the divine callings of the poet, and that the true poet was the voice of the seer crying in the wilderness of the world. He held the calling to be the highest among men. He saw nature and the soul with a prophet's eyes, and his heart went out to humanity, and he wrote to make the whole world better and to add to its happiness and hope. His works are pure and Christian. They express what the South once was. They voice and picture the Carolinas of the past. The son of the poet sees a new age, and stands at the door of a new era. May Heaven long bless the cottage home at Copse Hill. H. B. "Too late!" through God's infinite world, From his throne to life's nethermost fires, There's no height the strong wings of immortals may gain Which in striving to reach thou shalt strive for in vain. Then, up to the contest with fate, Unbound by the past, which is dead! What though the heart's roses are ashes and dust? And sublime as the seraph who rules in the sun CHOICE AND CHANGE. THREE maidens at a fair, one day, Chose each a flower from out the same boquet. ' The maiden shy who fain had dwelt apart, PRE-EXISTENCE. WHILE sauntering through the crowded street Some half-remembered face I meet, Albeit upon no mortal shore That face, methinks, hath smiled before. I tremble at some tender song I must have heard in other stars. In sacred aisles I pause to share When the whole scene which greets mine eyes As one whose every mystic part I feel prefigured in my heart. Seems the long stretch of wave and foam. I can foretell. A prescient lore LOVE'S AUTUMN. I WOULD not lose a single silvery ray Of those white locks which like a milky way I would not lose, O sweet! the misty shine of care; I would not miss the droop of thy dear mouth, The lips less dewy-red than when the South,— The young South wind of passion sighed o'er them; I would not miss each delicate flower that blows On thy wan cheeks, soft as September's rose Blushing but faintly on its faltering stem; I would not miss the air of chastened grace Which breathed divinely from thy patient face, Tells of love's watchful anguish, merged in rest; Naught would I miss of all thou hast, or art, Their presence keeps thy spiritual chambers pure; While the flesh fails, strong love grows more and more Divinely beautiful with perished years; Thus, at each slow, but surely deepening sign Love's spring was fair, love's summer brave and bland, But through love's autumn mist I view the land, The land of deathless summers yet to be; There, I behold thee, young again and bright, IN THE WHEAT-FIELD. WHEN the lids of the virgin Dawn unclose, I stand breast-high in the pearly wheat Aurora faints in the fulgent fire Of the Monarch of Morning's bright embrace, And the summer day climbs higher and higher Up the cerulean space; The pearl-tints fade from the radiant grain, The field seems graced by a million eyes; Each grain with a glance from its lidded fold, As bright as a gnome's in his mine of gold, While the slumbrous glamor of beam and heat Glides over and under the windless wheat. Yet the languid spirit of lazy Noon, With its minor and Morphean music rife, Hark! to the droning of drowsy wings, To the honey-bees as they go and come, To the "boomer" scarce rounding his sultry rings, The gnat's small horn, and the beetle's hum; And hark to the locust!- Noon's one shrill song, Like the tingling steel of an elfin gong, Grows lower through quavers of long retreat To swoon on the dazzled and distant wheat. Now Day declines! and his shafts of might Thus Eve creeps slowly and shyly down, And the gurgling notes of the swallows cease, But a step like the step of a conscious fawn O hand of the lily, O heart of truth, O love, thou art faithful and fond as Ruth; But I am the gleaner - of kisses - Sweet, A COMPARISON. I THINK, oftimes, that lives of men may be |