As illustrating his rich fancy and graphic power of diction, a few stanzas are given from Cloud Pictures. They are not unworthy of Tennyson in his happiest moments.
"At calm length I lie
Fronting the broad blue spaces of the sky,
Covered with cloud-groups, softly journeying by:
"An hundred shapes, fantastic, beauteous, strange,
Are theirs, as o'er yon airy waves they range
At the wind's will, from marvelous change to change:
"Castles, with guarded roof, and turret tall,
Great sloping archway, and majestic wall,
Sapped by the breezes to their noiseless fall!
"Pagodas vague! above whose towers outstream
Banners that wave with motions of a dream—
Rising or drooping in the noontide gleam;
"Gray lines of Orient pilgrims: a gaunt band
On famished camels, o'er the desert sand
Plodding towards their prophet's Holy Land;
"Mid-ocean,—and a shoal of whales at play,
Lifting their monstrous frontlets to the day,
Through rainbow arches of sun-smitten spray;
"Followed by splintered icebergs, vast and lone,
Set in swift currents of some arctic zone,
Like fragments of a Titan world o'erthrown."
In 1882 a complete edition of Hayne's poems was published by D. Lothrop & Co. Except a few poems written after that date and still uncollected, this edition contains his later productions, in which we discover an increasing seriousness, richness, and depth. The general range of subjects, as in his earlier volumes, is limited to his Southern environment and individual experience. This limitation is the severest charge that can be brought against his poetry, but, at the same time, it is an evidence of his sincerity and truth. He did not aspire, as did some of his great Northern contemporaries, to the office of moralist, philosopher, or reformer. He was content to dwell in the quiet realm of beauty as it appears, to use the words of Margaret J. Preston, in the "aromatic freshness of the woods, the swaying incense of the cathedral- like isles of pines, the sough of dying summer winds, the glint of lonely pools, and the brooding notes of leaf-hidden mocking-birds." But the beauty and pathos of human life were not forgotten; and now and then he touched upon the great spiritual truths on which the splendid heroism of his life was built. For delicacy of feeling and perfection of form, his meditative and religious poems deserve to rank among the best in our language. They contain what is so often lacking in poetry of this class, genuine poetic feeling and artistic expression.
The steps of death approached gradually; for, like two other great poets of the South, Timrod and Lanier, he was not physically strong. Though sustained through his declining years by "the ultimate trust"—