University of Texas (Main Building), Austin, Texas.
“There is no poet in America who has written more lovingly or discriminatingly about nature in her ever varying aspects. We are sure that in his loyal allegiance to her, he is not a whit behind Wordsworth, and we do not hesitate to say that he has often a grace that the old Lake-poet lacks.”—Mrs. Preston.
“Hayne has the lyric gift, and his shorter poems have a ring and richness that recall the glories of the Elizabethan period; . . . each shows the same careful and artistic workmanship.”—Collier.
THE MOCKING-BIRD.
(At Night.)
(From Poems, 1882.[28])
A golden pallor of voluptuous light
Filled the warm southern night;
The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene
Moved like a stately Queen,
So rife with conscious beauty all the while,
What could she do but smile
At her own perfect loveliness below,
Glassed in the tranquil flow
Of crystal fountains and unruffled streams?
Half lost in waking dreams,
As down the loneliest forest dell I strayed,
Lo! from a neighboring glade,
Flashed through the drifts of moonshine, swiftly came
A fairy shape of flame.
It rose in dazzling spirals overhead,
Whence, to wild sweetness wed,
Poured marvellous melodies, silvery trill on trill;
The very leaves grew still
On the charmed trees to hearken; while, for me,
Heart-thrilled to ecstasy,
I followed—followed the bright shape that flew,
Still circling up the blue,
Till, as a fountain that has reached its height
Falls back in sprays of light
Slowly dissolved, so that enrapturing lay,
Divinely melts away
Through tremulous spaces to a music-mist,
Soon by the fitful breeze
How gently kissed
Into remote and tender silences.
SONNET.—OCTOBER.
The passionate summer’s dead! the sky’s aglow
With roseate flushes of matured desire,
The winds at eve are musical and low,
As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre,
Far up among the pillared clouds of fire,
Whose pomp of strange procession upward rolls,
With gorgeous blazonry of pictured scrolls,
To celebrate the summer’s past renown;
Ah, me! how regally the heavens look down,
O’ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods
And harvest fields with hoarded increase brown,
And deep-toned majesty of golden floods,
That raise their solemn dirges to the sky,
To swell the purple pomp that floateth by.