Postlude
—Which ought to have been The Prelude to
this Spray of Kentucky Pine.
Because it was written, published, a little more than a year
before the Death of the Poet.
Therefore, it was a Tribute to him, Living!
A Promethean Poet was there. He had touched the
Heavenly flame; he had lasted the Waters of
Inspiration: he had drained the Crystal Cup of Fancy,
finding therein neither Lees nor Dregs, which
bite the tongue, stifle the song, of lesser Men; he had
reverently kissed the coy hand of Fame, when she had
crowned his Worthy Brow, with her Wreath Immortal!
His Poems, homely, simple, sweet—springing from the lap of
Nature—had spread, like wild-fire of the Forest,
into the Four Quarters of the Globe.
He came from the Land, across the River, where, in
these latter days, the People quit the planting of the Potato,
to pen a Poem: pause in the cultivation of the Corn, to
compose a Novel. Some of it is good, very good; Some
of it is bad, very bad: but all of it produces
a princely Revenue far in excess of any return
from either the Potato or the Corn.
Long before the avalanche-like advent of this State-
wide Literary Madness, the Star of this Poet had risen—
risen before, and still shines beyond, and above them all.
The hand which wrote "Goodbye, Jim"—not classical
in either Greek or Roman sense, yet a great
American Classic—with its pungent odor of Blue Jeans, with
its clean, sweet, clear-cut, fine smell, of its native soil—
that hand may never again hold the Pen; the man
himself, may crumble—God forbid!—back into the Dust—
that "Little Dust of Harm"—out of which he came;
but his Poems will not, cannot die.
When those other Writers will have been forgotten;
when even the gifted Maker of "Ben Hur" will be, but
as an empty name; even then, this Poet,
and his Poems, will cleave to the Mind, cling to the
Heart, of countless Generations, not yet born!
