Songs, from the Lays of Later
Days"--went to press, over nineteen hundred poems had accumulated on my
hands! And since that time the number has greatly increased. There were
battle odes, hymns, calls to arms, paeans and dirges and prayers for
peace--many of them good, few of them great; and the vast majority,
alas! wretchedly poor. Any attempted notice of their authors in limits
like this would be sheer failure; and where many did so well, it were
invidious to discriminate. The names of John R. Thompson, James
Randall, Henry Timrod, Paul Hayne, Barron Hope, Margaret Preston, James
Overall, Harry Lyndon Flash and Frank Ticknor had already become
household words in the South, where they will live forever.

Wherever his people read anything, the classic finish of his "Latane,"
the sweet caress of his "Stuart" and the bugle-blast of his "Coercion"
and "Word with the West," had assured John R. Thompson's fame. The
liltful refrain of "Maryland, my Maryland" echoed from the Potomac to
the Gulf; and the clarion-call James R. Randall so nobly used--"There's
Life in the Old Land Yet!"--warmed every southern heart, by the dead
ashes on its hearth. Who does not remember "Beechenbrook," that pure
Vestal in the temple of Mars? Every tear of sympathy that fell upon its
pages was a jewel above rubies, in the crown of its gentle author.

Paul Hayne had won already the hearts of his own readers; and had
gained transatlantic meed, in Tennyson's declaration that he was "the
sonneteer of America!" And the yearning sorrow in all eyes that looked
upon the fresh mound, above what was mortal of tender Henry Timrod, was
more eloquent of worth than costly monument, or labored epitaph.

But not only the clang of action and the freedom of stirring scenes
produced the southern war-poems. Camp Chase and forts Warren and
Lafayette contributed as glowing strains as any written. Those grim
bastiles held the bodies of their unconquered inmates; while their
hearts lived but in the memory of those scenes, in which their fettered
hands were debarred further portion. Worn down by confinement, hunger
and the ceaseless pressure of suspense; weakened by sickness and often
oppressed by vulgar indignity--the spirit of their cause still lingered
lovingly around them; and its bright gleams warmed and lighted the
darkest recesses of their cells.

That bugle blast, "Awake and to horse, my brothers!", Teackle Wallis
sent from the walls of Warren, when he was almost