Birmingham age-herald., 1894-07-15
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD.

The night has stripped the glad day of her glories; the moon is leading the joyous stars in minuet along the sky; not a breath of discord mars the serenity of Mother Earth and no sound save the faintly throbbing hearts of roses stirs the silence.
 The soul that craves the smile of fortune cannot live, even with So fair comrade as lovely nature, alone in the world and un- related. The tides of affection will wind down the fiuted columns of convention ality and worldiness and pour their fret ting waters into the swollen river oi the great life current beyond us.
 The amber wings of inspiration droop over the thrilling chaos of restless thought and yet the clogging machinery of feeble bodies, a reticence of expression, the re- suit of an overabundant conception which transcends our command over the working tools of our art, all have share in frosting the dew drops on the lips of fancy. Let us not judge harshly of our silent brethren whose sombre mein and unspsaking glance provoke our scorn. The poor groundlings they seem.
 Sometimes we say: :There goes a man who does not know that Columbus discov- cred America" Silence ye, minimizing critics. They are rude specimens of the 'sDivine Man" Granted, but oh, if the fet- ters were but filed off If the anchors of igno- rance and poverty were lifted, if the heights of Knowledge from them were not covered with eternal snow; if, l say, those things were not, how many souls, crystalized in the delicate moulds of the muses, transmitted in the cruclble of pain and sorrow from dross to purest metal, would exhale their fragraucs to the world. But an me! The tyrian eyes of old age creep upon the unordained. "Destiny loves Euphony' and permits her children to languish in the arms of silence. Oh, those awful calms enforced upon the igno- rant. Think of it, friends, sea for sixty years 4n broken by ripple. The thicket of golden stars are nightly reflected above it's gassy surface, and no warm light flashes back it's gleaming, the east kindles with coming rays, and the dews empearl the frond fringes on its banks, and still it remains unresponsive; pale primrose lights deck the fi4ecy horizon and find their doub in the fluid mirror; the crim- son gates flash apart, the great red globe swings above the tree tops, but the dead lake stirs not from it's wondrous trance. And if the soundless depths could speak, it's voice could not penetrate the ice rind Of the disc. Barriers would rise to confront it and an undertow of timidity would bear the frothy driftwood of thoughts that could not rise.
 Thus it is that great number of people cannot say, when an opportunity offers, what is in their hearts. The poets who walk with sandalled feet and flaming sword, who burn With celestial fires as those in the blue waste above, are an- nointed of art. Their joy millienumed moment is at hand when adequate lan- guage nipples forth freighted with a true picture of the children their brains have conceived. No vast Cheops has arisen in their paths, nc ghastly polar star has ap- peared in the orient portals; the twinkling seconds fash by beaming and bright; their pens sift no murky words from the unmud- dled wheels of the1r charioteered muse.
 But the broken links of my thoughts are blending with the calculations which the first signal of approaching day brings to the man of the world. A song to our sunny south and am done.
 The stars grow bright in the wide expanse
 Of the southern and purplish heavens fair The opal clouds their glows enhance
 And glittering streamers float in air
 Like golden hair.
 The south, sweet south, in the fair countrie!
 Where the flowers and vintage gardens
 bask-
 Meath the royal sun, that arch pumpki in,
 That shimmering covers with wealth untold
 Our land with gold.
 This gold is doubtless showered in lieu of filthy lucre, which some mercsnary towns in Alabama prefer to the poetical article. Do you pity those grovelling earthlings as much as does
 SIDNEY DARYL?