The herald., 1896-12-13
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THE SONGS OE THE SOUTH"
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BY JOHN SHIRLEY WARD

All lovers of pure, rythmic literature,
especially those born and reared in the
south, will hail with no ordinary pleas
ure The Songs of the South, edited by
Miss Jennie Thornley, Clarke of Georgia
and introduced by Joel Chandler Har-
ris. The south before the war gave little
thought to the perpetuity of her songs.
1t is true, she sang, but her songs were
like those of her mocking bird. when
swinging amid bowers of myrtle and
palm. only for the chance listener, with
neither the hope nor the wish that the
printing press should catch their notes
and wed them to immortality. A con-
tented and happy people seldom pro-
duces an enduring literature. Great
songs are born of great sorrows. Sorrow
is said to be the source of song and of
gentle fancies. 1t was only when grim
vsaged war sprnkled blood on almost
every southern hearthstone that song
was born in the southern heart. 1t was
only when the south was treading alone
the wine-pre of the nations wrath that
she tuned her harp to breathe out in
elegy and lyric the Had of her woes.
Since that day she has struck every
note in the gamut of music, from the
cooings of the babe to the thunderous
commands of battle, from the lovers
plant to the thrilling lyric, from the
Gus roar of ocean. Reading Americans
once under pious delusion, located
Olympus in the suburbs of Boston, and
honey bearing Hymettus crowned the
crest of Bunker Hill. and the Fount of
Castaly bubbled beneath the walls of
Cambridge. AS the center of population,
once near the Atlantic coast, has drifted
far towards the south and west, so has
the mount of poetic inspiration followed
its course. The Songs of the South de-
mand for her singers a niche in the
worlds pantheon of poetry, and she em-
phasizes her claim by the choicest Of
ferings of Poe and Hayne, of Lanier and
Prentice, of Ryan and Timrod, of Mar
garet j. Preston and Mary Bayard
Clarke. of Albert Pike and James Barron
Hope, of Randall and O'Hara and scores
of others. who have flung out on the
world leaflets of songs not born to die.
Two of the songs which enrich this
volume have become enshrined in the
northern heart, as patriotism never rises
to such rapture as when 1t sings The
Star -Spangled Banner, written by
Francis Scott Key of Maryland; and
Boston, though the very nursery of
poetic genius, has only to look on her
public monument to her dead, who
fell in Mexico, to read a quatran from
O'Hara's BiVouac of the Dead and
many of the monuments of the national
cemetery at Arlington have chosen from
this same poem verses to express the
nations tribute of love and tears for
those who had given their blood as a
libation to libertys cause. Out of the
hundreds of poems which have setting
in this volume. it might be invidous to
single out authors or poems of special
excellence. but we would do violence to
our taste did we not refer to Maryland,
My Maryland. by James r. Randall.
Omitting two unfortunate words in the
last two stanzas, Maryland, My Mary
land, is the grandest lyric called out by
the civil war on either side. Mrs. Pres
ton stands as the representative female
poet of the south, as her pen never
touched anything it did not adorn, and
Father Ryan has put tongue in each
wounded heart of the south which has
been as thrilling in battle anthem as it
has been soulful and tender in elegy.
Time and space forbid further special
notice. Critics may complain that the
south has produced no poem of great
length. This is true, but nearly all the
great masters have won their places in