"Ah, me!--not dies--no more than spirit dies; But in a change like death is clothed with wings; A serious angel, with entrancèd eyes, Looking to far off and celestial things." Again, in all these poems there is a nameless spell of a simplicity, fervid yet tender, and an imagination, strong yet delicate, both in its perception and expression. His style, "like noble music unto noble words," is elaborate, yet perfectly natural. There is no trace of labor; grace guides and power impels. So perfect is it at times in its natural power that the mind is almost unconscious of the word-symbol in grasping immediately the thought revealed. There is in the verse a ceaseless melody and perfect finish. At times there is "the easy elegance of Catullus", always his delight, and a metrical translation of whose poems he had completed. Rare endowment with broad culture is evinced in the high intellectual level always maintained; and the evenness of quality that is always of the mountain top. He always knows his power, and its range. His song is always clear and true. Moreover, with a universality of poetic feeling, he has struck every chord, and always with a keen sensibility and delicacy of natural instinct. Among the finest poems, how wide is this range and varied this power! "The Vision of Poesy", his longest work, written in youth, essaying the mission and the philosophy of the poetic art, has some lofty passages, and all the promise of his later power, felicity, and melody. "A Year's Courtship" is in its glow, and grace, and music the perfection of classic art. The dainty voluptuousness in a "Serenade" kindles with the luxuriousness of the South. His "Præceptor Amat" is warm with the breath of rapturous feeling, and rich with the fragrance of flowers. "Ethnogenesis", "the birth of the nation", is regarded by some his greatest poem. It is prophecy linked with the hope and aspiration of the newborn nation of the South. A permanent image of the Southern nature and character is thus richly portrayed:-- "But the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas." "The Cotton Boll", in "the snow of Southern summers", is a forerunner of Lanier's "Corn". It reveals the mystic spell and kingly power of that far-stretching tropic snow, and contains that glowing painting of Carolina from sea to mountain, which closes "No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, Or given a home to man!" "Too Long, O Spirit of Storm", is the fused passion of the poet's heart appalled at the moral death of stagnation. It has all the intensity and subtlety of Shelley.