lity, when
purified and spiritualized, has no Byronic bitterness, no selfish
morbidness, no impenetrable gloom, but in his own exquisite lines it
is,--

"A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss,
Each still to each corrective and relief,
Where dim delights are brightened into bliss,
And nothing wholly perishes but Grief.

"Ah, me!--not dies--no more than spirit dies;
But in a change like death is clothed with wings;
A serious angel, with entranced eyes,
Looking to far off and celestial things."

Again, in all these poems there is a nameless spell of a simplicity,
fervid yet tender, and an imagination, strong yet delicate, both in its
perception and expression.

His style, "like noble music unto noble words," is elaborate, yet
perfectly natural. There is no trace of labor; grace guides and power
impels. So perfect is it at times in its natural power that the mind
is almost unconscious of the word-symbol in grasping immediately the
thought revealed.

There is in the verse a ceaseless melody and perfect finish. At times
there is "the easy elegance of Catullus", always his delight, and a
metrical translation of whose poems he had completed.

Rare endowment with broad culture is evinced in the high intellectual
level always maintained; and the evenness of quality that is always of
the mountain top. He always knows his power, and its range. His song is
always clear and true.

Moreover, with a universality of poetic feeling, he has struck every
chord, and always with a keen sensibility and delicacy of natural
instinct. Among the finest poems, how wide is this range and varied this
power!

"The Vision of Poesy", his longest work, written in youth, essaying the
mission and the philosophy of the poetic art, has some lofty passages,
and all the promise of his later power, felicity, and melody.

"A Year's Courtship" is in its glow, and grace, and music the perfection
of classic art.

The dainty voluptuousness in a "Serenade" kindles with the luxuriousness
of the South.

His "Praeceptor Amat" is warm with the breath of rapturous feeling, and
rich with the fragrance of flowers.

"Ethnogenesis", "the birth of the nation", is regarded by some his
greatest poem. It is prophecy linked with the hope and aspiration of the
newborn nation of the South. A permanent image of the Southern nature
and character is thus richly portrayed:--

"But the type
Whe