VI
The two most prominent younger poets of the South were Robert Burns Wilson (1850–1916) and Madison Cawein (1865–1914), both residents of Kentucky, one at Frankfort, the other at Louisville, and both contemplative Nature poets who voiced but little the spirit of their period. Of the two, Wilson undoubtedly was the most inspired singer, as Cawein was the most careful observer of Nature.
Of Wilson we may say that he was a later Thomas Buchanan Read, a devotee of art, a painter of landscapes and portraits, whose work was seen in many distinctive galleries, and in addition to this a poet—most pictorial of poets, whose stanzas seem like inscriptions for his paintings. When the lyrics "When Evening Cometh On" and "June Days" appeared in Harper's in 1885, it was felt that a new singer had come. There was distinction in the lines, there was restraint, there was more than promise, there was already fulfilment. One feels a quality in a stanza like this that he may not explain:
Though all the birds be silent—though
The fettered stream's soft voice be still,
And on the leafless bough the snow
Be rested, marble-like and chill—
Yet will the fancy build from these
The transient but well-pleasing dream
Of leaf and bloom among the trees,
And sunlight glancing on the stream.
It has somehow the singing quality that may not be learned, that may not be taught. Finer still when there is joined with it graphic power that arrests and pleases the eye, and pathos that grips hard the heart, as in a lyric like this:
Such is the death the soldier dies:
He falls—the column speeds away;
Upon the dabbled grass he lies,
His brave heart following, still, the fray.
The smoke-wraiths drift among the trees,
The battle storms along the hill;
The glint of distant arms he sees;
He hears his comrades shouting still.
A glimpse of far-borne flags, that fade
And vanish in the rolling din:
He knows the sweeping charge is made,
The cheering lines are closing in.
Unmindful of his mortal wound,
He faintly calls and seeks to rise;
But weakness drags him to the ground—
Such is the death the soldier dies.