“Buncombe Hall,
Welcome all!”
ALBERT PIKE.
1809=1891.
Albert Pike was born in Boston, but after his twenty-second year made his home in the South. He was a student at Harvard and taught for a while; in 1831, he went to Arkansas, walking, it is said, five hundred miles of the way, as his horse had run away in a storm.
He became an editor and then a lawyer, cultivating letters at the same time, and wrote the “Hymns to the Gods.” He served in the Mexican and Civil Wars, with rank in the latter of Brigadier-General in the Confederate army. He afterwards made his home in Washington City, where he at first practised his profession, but later gave his attention mostly to literature and Freemasonry.
WORKS.
Hymns to the Gods.
Prose Sketches and Poems.
Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Arkansas.
Works on Freemasonry.
Nugae, (including Hymns to the Gods).
The following poem is one of the best on that wonderful bird whose song almost all Southern poets have celebrated. It has a classic ring and reminds one of Keats’ Odes on the Nightingale and on a Grecian Urn.