page_title: Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord
section_title: Poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord / Writer / Poetry
caption_attribution_description: English: Caius Gracchus: A Tragedy in Five Acts, By Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord
context_page_description: Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord, was an American author from South Carolina, best known as a political essayist. McCord, the daughter of Langdon Cheves, was born in 1810, in South Carolina. She was educated in Philadelphia. In 1840, she married David James McCord, becoming a widow in 1855. She mainly resided in Columbia, South Carolina.
  She was active as an author from the 1840s onward, and her production is regarded as an important contribution of Southern Antebellum literature. McCord's writings consisted principally of essays and reviews, and she wrote well on the subject of political economy. Her published volumes included, My Dreams, a volume of poems, published in Philadelphia in 1848; Sophisms of the Protective Policy. A translation from the French of Bastiat, published in New York. 1848; Caius Gracchus. A five-act tragedy, published in New York, 1851. McCord was a contributor to the "Southern Quarterly Review," and the "Southern Literary Messenger," for a number of years from 1849. Her poetry was simple and clearly uttered.
context_section_description: In the year 1848, McCord published her first book of poetry. My Dreams, a collection of fugitive poems, from the press of Carey & Hart, Philadelphia. A close study of these poems reveals a genuine poetic talent, but there is not the certainty of maturity, not the metrical perfection of first-rate poetry. The lyrist is an honestly doubting lyrist in many passages. There are a number of them that are either of adolescent composition, withheld until 1848 for publication, or at least of adolescent conception, possibly worked over for this volume. Hope is the keynote of a majority of the poems in this collection; but in many instances the hope is unaccompanied by any certainty of faith which a woman of McCord's full life and wide experience must have developed at the time this collection was published. A few of the poems are narrative myths, a direct reflection of her classic temperament. They suggest early Greek myths, and meet the reader with such titles as "The Daughters of Hope," who are cleverly personified as Fancy and Happiness, and, Happiness being lost in Life's confusion, Fancy assists her mother, Hope, to chase Happiness through all time. Others included "The Falling Star," "Love, Wisdom, Folly," "The Comet," "The Star That Followed Me," "Conduct of the Sources of Good and Evil," "The Home of Hope" and "The Voice of a Star." Then there is a grouping possible among them of simple narratives of the world of concrete things. For example, the pathetic "Poor Nannie" and "The Blood Stained Rose," "The Birth of the Evergreens" and "Pretty Fanny." But it is in the third division of these poems that McCord's maturity expresses her feelings, and in the poems of this group that deal with the eternal riddle of life and death. They suggest the suffering spirit. "My Dream Child," "The Village Churchyard," "The First Beam of Light," "My Dead," "Ye're Born to Die" and others are found here. Probably the best among them is "The Voice of Years."
  It was not until three years later, in 1851, that McCord essayed a longer poetic effort in Caius Gracchus, a tragedy in five acts. This showed a maturity and a greater care in preparation. The main source of the plot is the story of the Gracchi, which McCord follows rather closely. The play was probably never intended for the stage; it belongs to that class of classic closet dramas that were in vogue in the first half of the 19th century. The character interpretation is probably the strongest and most valuable work. Caius is heroic, and his girl wife is as winsome as a Roman girl could well be; the mob in its vacillations is accurately drawn, and Cornelia is a masterpiece. The probability is that the real Cornelia was a favorite heroine of McGord's. Their lives bear similarities in biography; they were called upon to make supreme sacrifices that were identical, and they endured with similar silent heroism.
caption: Caius Gracchus
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