PREFACE THESE poems are selected from the wide range of Southern poetry, that the South's contribution to our national literature may be in part apprehended. For a long time the productions of Southern writers were so inaccessible that authors of text-books on American Literature were disposed to neglect them altogether; and even later the admission of any Southern author, save one or two of international fame, was somewhat grudging and apologetic. In recent years, especially since the publication of the Library of Southern Literature, by which a new perspective for American literature was afforded, fuller treatment has been accorded these Southern authors; bnt very few students1 of American literature have yet comprehended clearly and fully that, for some periods of our literary history and in some significant and far-reaching movements, literature in the South has been the dominant and controlling factor. These selections, however, have not been made to establish any cause or exemplify any theory, but partly to illustrate chronological development, and mainly to portray Southern life and sentiment in poems of individual literary merit. In giving preference to such poems as reveal characteristics of Southern climate, conditions, and life, the danger has not been escaped of presenting an occasional sentiment heated by the 1 A notable exception is Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, in his Amerikanische Literatur, published by Weidmannische Buchhandlung, Berlin, Germany. 263627 passions of war or heightened by the presence of a dramatic crisis. It would be strange indeed if at that time no such sentiment were cherished or uttered: it would be even stranger to-day if we could not read these sentiments with the sympathy that belongs to their circumstances or the intellectual detachment that belongs to ours. As a nation we can recognize the literary merit of the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Maryland, My Maryland, even though as individuals we may not commend all the sentiments of either. In choosing these poems free use has been made of, first, the Library of Southern Literature, edited by Charles W. Kent and others, published by the Martin & Hoyt Company, Atlanta, Georgia; second, Three Centuries of Southern Poetry, edited by Carl Holliday, published by the Publishing House of the Methodist Church, South, Nashville, Tennessee; third, Songs of the South, edited by Jennie Thornley Clarke, published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. Acknowledgments to holders of copyright are made at appropriate points throughout the following pages. |