“A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea,”—Allan Cunningham.
Allan Cunningham, a noted Scotch poet and miscellaneous writer, was born in Keir, Dumfriesshire, December 7, 1784, and died in London, October 30, 1842. His best known works are: “Lord Roldan,” “Paul Jones,” “Sir Marmaduke Maxwell,” and his most famous work, “Critical History of the Literature of the Last Fifty Years.”
Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.
“Spring,”—Henry Timrod.
Henry Timrod, a famous American Southern poet and author, was born at Charleston, S. C., December 8, 1829, and died at Columbia, S. C., October 6, 1867. His “Poems” appeared in 1860.
You k’n hide de fier, but w’at you gwine do wid de smoke?
“Plantation Proverbs,”—Joel Chandler Harris.
Joel Chandler Harris, a noted American journalist and story writer, was born at Eatonton, Georgia, December 8, 1848, and died July 3, 1908. He has written: “Daddy Jake, the Runaway,” “The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation,” etc. He is best known, however, by his famous “Uncle Remus” sketches.
Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompany’d; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleas’d. Now glow’d the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.
“Paradise Lost,” Book IV, Line 598,—John Milton.