Inscrutable! men strive To rend thy secret from thy rocky breast,- Whilst unrelenting, Upon thy mountain throne, and unrepenting, I sit beneath thy stars The shallop moon beach'd on a bank of clouds- The day's suggestion The endless repetition of one question; EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. Born 1843 SLEEPING. HUSH'D within her quiet bed Nay! I smile at your shock'd face: Eyelids on the tired eyes press'd, Hands that cross upon the breast,"We shall understand it-dead! Yet 'twill only be a sleep: When, with songs and dewy light, A POET'S APOLOGY. TRUTH cut on high in tablets of hewn stone, Pass'd by and scorn'd; But Truth enchased upon a jewel rare, A man would keep, and next his bosom wear. So, many an hour, I sit and carve my gems,- Not for king's diadems,- Some amulet That may be worn o'er hearts that toil and plod,—Though but one pearl that bears the name of God. NOTES. 1. HOPKINSON-page 3. Drake says he was born in 1778: a manifest misprint. Drake (American Biography) is my usual authority; but I have had to correct him by Allibone (Dictionary of Authors) and Griswold, and each by other or by personal inquiry. 2. ADAMS AND LIBERTY-p. 5. By this poem, written soon after 1797, Paine is said to have made $750, nearly ten dollars a line. The stanza on Washington was added by particular request. 3. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER-p. 7. During the war of 1812 with England Mr Key, then residing in Baltimore, having had occasion to go on board of one of the vessels of the British fleet, was detained to witness the attack on Fort McHenry; and, says Griswold, wrote this Song in honour of the flag which floated over the fort during the whole of the futile bombardment. 4. AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN-P. 8. First printed with Coleridge's Sybilline Leaves in England, in 1810. A volume of Allston's Poems appeared in 1813. Though born in South Carolina, Allston was educated at Harvard; and his life was spent, in his studies and practice as a painter, either at the North or in Europe. Cranch (also a painter) was born at Alexandria, on the border line of Virginia and the District of Columbia. Neither in his nor Allston's life or writings is there anything to mark them as Southerners. The same may be said of others. Maxwell was educated at Yale. The only distinctively Southern poets are Timrod and Randall; and their distinction is but political. the absence of even a Southern flavour is very remarkable. 5. PAULDING p. 10. Indeed Allibone says, born in 1778; but Drake and Griswold say '79. 6. DANA-p. 16. His Poems were first published collectively in 1827. I am informed that he was certainly alive in 1872, and I believe that he is living at the time of this present writing. A Richard Henry Dana junior was apparent quite recently. In all cases where I have not given date of death I believe the persons to be living, though of course I cannot be sure. The latest edition of Drake's Biography, generally trustworthy, is dated 1874; but internal evidence fixes its last revision at 1871. 7. THE CROSSED SWORDS-p. 22. One belonged to the royalist Captain "Linzee" (or Lindsay ?) of the Falcon sloop of war, that took part in the Bunker Hill fight, June 17, 1775; the other to the American Colonel Prescott. Thackeray begins his novel of The Virginians with a reference to these "On the library wall of one of the most famous writers of America" (William Hickling Prescott to wit) "there hang two swords," etc. The swords are now preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society at Boston-" in memory of associations with which they will be inseparably connected." 8. BRYANT-p. 25. Allibone says incorrectly—" born in 1797." Placing the Poets in chronological order of course prevents the same order for poems: Bryant's later poems, for instance, taking their position under his name many years anterior to some much earlier works of other writers immediately following. So in the compass of a few pages appear his Thanatopsis, published in 1821; To a Waterfowl, the Hymn to the North Star, the Death of the Flowers (then called the Close of Autumn) printed before 1829; and two of his latest poems, The Third of November 1861 and Waiting by the Gate. It was impossible to find out the date of every poem: the arrangement according to birth of writers was therefore the nearest approach to order that could be had, though I have endeavoured in quoting from the greater writers to give specimens of both earlier and later periods, and as nearly as I could according to time of production. The critical reader should bear these remarks in mind when estimating the various merits of the poems. 9. THE FRINGED GENTIAN-p. 30. This the blue fringed gentian-G. crinita (Froelich) is the Poet's favourite flower. 10. HALLECK-p. 37. Drake says, born in 1790. Griswold and Allibone agree in 1795, with particulars which seem to vouch for their correctness. I have had to steer as I best could through several similar discrepancies. 11. JOHN HOWARD Bryant-p. 82. The brother of William Cullen Bryant. 12. WHITTIER-p. 86. Drake has his birthday Dec: 17, 1807; Allibone says 1808. Whittier writes to me-"My birthday was the very last of the year 1807." Dec: 31. 13. SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE-p. 87. "Wild-eyed, free-limb'd, such as chase The New England pronunciation makes vase agree with chace. 14. BURIAL OF BARBOUR-p. 94. Barbour was one of the first slain of those brave men who endeavoured by settling in the new territories to shut out slavery, restricting it at all costs within the original State limits. John Brown's first work was in the same cause. 15. TELLING THE BEES-p. 100. An old English superstition preserved in New England. Else, it was thought, the bees would desert their hives and remove to another homestead. The chore-girl is the girl who does odd jobs-" chores "-about the house: chore-woman, I suppose, the same as our charwoman. |