My motherland! my motherland! Thy bravest and thy best, Beneath the sod their life-blood stained, In dreamless slumber rest; Thrice happy dead! They cannot hear Thy low, sad wail of woe; The taunts thy living sons must bear They are not doomed to know. My motherland! my motherland! Their spirits whisper me, And bid me in thy days of grief Still closer cling to thee, And though the hopes we cherished once With them have found a grave, I love thee yet, my motherland-- The land they died to save. Whether he spoke for his section in these disdainful and defiant lines, descriptive of times just after the war, each may decide for himself: RE-RECONSTRUCTION. Aye, heat the iron seven times hot In the furnace red of hell; Call to your aid the venomed skill Of "all the fiends that fell," And forge new links for the galling chain To bind the prostrate South again. Stir up again your snarling pack Your jackals black and white, That tear her lovely form by day, And gnaw her bones by night-- Your sniveling thieves with carpet bags-- Your sneaking, whining scalawags! * * * * * Villains, go on; each blow you strike To glut your hellish hate, But welds in one all Southern hearts, And state unites to state; And lo, compact our Southland stands-- A nation fashioned by your hands. But it is in the poems personal and descriptive that we get close to this poet's heart. There will be found what gave most solace to his circumscribed and lonely life. In nature as she was most attractive to him, and in lines to loved ones young and old, plaintive often but never rebellious or morose, the placid, self-restrained, yet inspiring nature of the man is brought to clearest view. Fervid in his love for beauty, he bowed none the less devoutly at the shrine of duty. "The Old School House," "The Deserted Home," "Autumn," "The Frost and the Forest," "My Castle," "Lines on the Death of My Father," "My Old Home," and the last poem "Unfinished," are representative of the class that best reflects the poet and the man; and by their pensive beauty perhaps take firmest hold upon the reader. It is difficult to offer satisfactory illustrations without being too lengthy; but these will prove at least suggestive: AUTUMN. Let nobler poets tune their lyres to sing The budding glories of the early spring,-- Its gay sweet-scented flowers and verdant trees That graceful bend before the western breeze. Be mine the task to chant in humble rhyme The lovely autumn of our own bright Southern clime.