January First
Some thunder on the heights of song, their race
Godlike in power, while others at their feet
Are breathing measures scarce less strong and sweet
Than those that peal from out that loftiest place;
Meantime, just midway on the mount, his face
Fairer than April heavens, when storms retreat,
And on their edges rain and sunshine meet,
Pipes the soft lyrist lays of tender grace,
But where the slopes of bright Parnassus sweep
Near to the common ground, a various throng
Chant lowlier measures—yet each tuneful strain
(The silvery minor of earth’s perfect song)
Blends with that music of the topmost steep,
O’er whose vast realm the master minstrels reign!
Paul Hamilton Hayne
O’er those who lost and those who won,
Death holds no parley which was right—
Jehovah judges Arlington.
James Ryder Randall
Paul Hamilton Hayne born, 1830
James Ryder Randall, Laureate of the War between the States, born, 1839
January Second
... In a word,
Mars and Minerva both in him concurred
For arts, for arms, whose pen and sword alike,
As Cato’s did, may admiration strike
Into his foes; while they confess withal
It was their guilt styled him a criminal....
From Epitaph by “His Man”
In this epitaph we have what is in all probability the single poem in any true sense—the single product of sustained poetic art—that was written in America for a hundred and fifty years after the settlement of Jamestown.
William P. Trent