TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 65 



on a breezy hill-top, as I did lately, and read 

 this : 



" I hung my verses in the wind ; 



Time and tide their faults may find : 

 All were winnowed through and through ; 

 Five lines lasted sound and true." 



Or this : 



" The bell of beetle and of bee 

 Knell their melodious memory ; " 



and he will feel a new consciousness of how 

 Nature 



" Rounds with rhyme her every rune." 



Scattered all through Emerson's poems are 

 thoughts that cut into nature and tap her 

 sweetest and most hidden veins. 



It is remarkable that no Southern poet has 

 arisen to give us the wood-notes of the land of 

 the magnolia and the orange. Some of Syd- 

 ney Lanier's verses, it is true, are dashed with 

 the fervid colors of the semi-tropic, but he did 

 not live to do his best, and his ill-health no 

 doubt interfered with his out-door studies. 

 His Marsh Hymns are lofty, fragmentary na- 

 ture-songs, and I have no doubt that when his 

 poems appear in book-form, as they soon will, 

 it will be seen that his death was a sad thing 

 for those who like genuine poetry. Still the 

 fact remains that we have no poet who gives 

 us the warm, odorous, fruitful South in rhythm 

 and rhyme slumbrous as her sunshine and 

 electrifying as her breezes. Indeed, no poet, 

 of whatever country, has ever found the way 

 to an expression of tropical out-door life. Of 

 course I do not speak of mere descriptive 

 verse, which is the lowest order of poetry. A 

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