Whether he spoke for his section in these disdainful and defiant lines, descriptive of times just after the war, each may decide for himself:
RE-RECONSTRUCTION.
Aye, heat the iron seven times hot
In the furnace red of hell;
Call to your aid the venomed skill
Of "all the fiends that fell,"
And forge new links for the galling chain
To bind the prostrate South again.
Stir up again your snarling pack
Your jackals black and white,
That tear her lovely form by day,
And gnaw her bones by night—
Your sniveling thieves with carpet bags—
Your sneaking, whining scalawags!
But it is in the poems personal and descriptive that we get close to this poet's heart. There will be found what gave most solace to his circumscribed and lonely life. In nature as she was most attractive to him, and in lines to loved ones young and old, plaintive often but never rebellious or morose, the placid, self-restrained, yet inspiring nature of the man is brought to clearest view. Fervid in his love for beauty, he bowed none the less devoutly at the shrine of duty.
"The Old School House," "The Deserted Home," "Autumn," "The Frost and the Forest," "My Castle," "Lines on the Death of My Father," "My Old Home," and the last poem "Unfinished," are representative of the class that best reflects the poet and the man; and by their pensive beauty perhaps take firmest hold upon the reader. It is difficult to offer satisfactory illustrations without being too lengthy; but these will prove at least suggestive:
AUTUMN.
Let nobler poets tune their lyres to sing
The budding glories of the early spring,—
Its gay sweet-scented flowers and verdant trees
That graceful bend before the western breeze.
Be mine the task to chant in humble rhyme
The lovely autumn of our own bright Southern clime.
No more the sun from the zenith high,
With fiery tongue licks brook and riv'let dry;
But from beyond the equinoctial line—
Where crystal waters lave the golden mine—
Aslant on earth he pours his mellow beams,
Soft as the memories which light old age's dreams.