ANNABEL LEE These verses were first published in the New York Tribune of October 9, 1849. The refrain and measure of this lyric suggest a reversion, in the music-haunted brain of its author, to the songs and melodies that, whether primitive or caught up, are favorites with the colored race, and that must have been familiar to the poet during his childhood in the South." - STEDMAN. Read Browning's Evelyn Hope. THE BELLS Sartain's Union Magazine for December, 1849, in which the present form of The Bells appears, gives the following lines as the original form : — The bells!-hear the bells! The merry wedding bells! The little silver bells! How fairy-like a melody there swells From the silver tinkling cells Of the bells, bells, bells! Of the bells! The bells! ah, the bells! The heavy iron bells! Hear the tolling of the bells! Hear the knells! How horrible a monody there floats From their throats From their deep-toned throats! How I shudder at the notes Page 28, line 10. Runic rhyme: mystic verse. Read Dryden's A Song for St. Cecilia's Day and his Alexander's Feast. See also, for onomatopoetic effects, Ingelow's High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire. TIMROD THE COTTON BOLL Page 35, line 22. boll: the seed-vessel of the cotton. 1. 38. cirque: a circular valley. 1. 65. Uriel: Th' Archangel Uriel, one of the seven Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne, 1. 95. touched our swamps: In Simms's poem, The Edge of the Swamp. 1. 98. Poet of "The Woodlands": William Gilmore Simms. 1. 162. Goth the Northern soldiers fighting in the War between the States. Read Hayne's In the Wheat-field, Lanier's Corn, and Bayard Taylor's Mon-da-min or The Romance of Maize. THE LILY CONFIDANTE Page 42, line 27. Thou must woo: Read the lines in Lanier's Symphony, beginning : — "O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet." Read Waller's Go, Lovely Rose. CAROLINA Page 44, line 27. Eutaw's battle-bed: A battle was fought at Eutaw Springs in which the Continentals under General Green defeated the British. 1. 31. Rutledge ruled and Lauréns died: John Rutledge was in 1776 elected president and commander-in-chief of Carolina. This office he resigned in 1778; but after a short time he was elected governor and served until the termination of the war. John Laurens was a colonel in the forces against Yorktown. As Charleston was still in the hands of the British, he returned to Carolina. He rose from a bed of sickness to lead an expedition, and was shot while at the head of his forces, in the twentyseventh year of his age. 1. 34. Marion: the famous partisan leader of the Revolutionary War. 1. 45. Huns: Northern troops. 1. 50. From Sachem's Head to Sumter's wall: from Cæsar's Head, a mountain peak in northwestern South Carolina, to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. 1. 79. armorial trees: palmetto trees. ODE This ode was sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867. It was praised by Whittier as "in its simple grandeur, the noblest poem ever written by a Southern poet." Page 48, line 7. waiting for its birth: A fitting monument has since been erected. 1. 17. Stoop, angels: Read Collins's ode: How Sleep the Brave! Page 49, line 10. SONNET There is no unimpressive spot: This line and the next are eloquent evidence of Wordsworth's influence on Timrod. HAYNE THE SOLITARY LAKE Page 51, line 30. Ariel: the tricksy fairy of Shakspere's Tempest. Read Simm's Edge of the Swamp and Shaded Water. AETHRA Page 53, line 29. my clear sky: This phrase translates the name Aëthra. Page 54, line 7. IN THE WHEAT-FIELD Hermes the messenger of the gods. 1. 13. Aurora: the goddess of the morning. 1. 26. Morphean music: having the quality of producing sleep. Morpheus was the god of dreams. Read Lanier's Corn. MACDONALD'S RAID Macdonald was one of Marion's men. He led his four men into the fortified post, Georgetown, S.C., held by the British with three hundred regulars. He brought out his men unharmed. Page 57, line 19. Ben Lomond: a mountain of central Scot land. 1. 28. dolce dolce far niente, delightful idleness. Hayne has a poem with this phrase for title. 1. 59. minions: dependents. How is the stem of this word related to that of "minnesinger"? 1. 72. Brobdingnag: the land of giants visited by Gulliver. THE MOCKING BIRD Page 63, line 15. "Whoever has closely observed the bird has noted its mounting song,' a very different performance, wherein the songster begins on the lowest branch of a tree, and appears literally to mount on its music, from bough to bough, until the highest spray of the top is reached, where it will sit for many minutes flinging upon the air an ecstatic stream of almost infinitely varied vocalization." - MAURICE THOMPSON, By-ways and Bird-notes. In addition to the mocking bird verse in this book, read Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, and the lines |