Songs of sentiment

Preface

An old box of fragile, faded, yellow clippings from newspapers, like ashes of roses whose perfume remains. Can these live again, and also renew life for their readers? As surely as they are the genuine expressions of changeless human sentiments in the midst of the common experiences of life.

Perhaps it is significant that on the back of one of these clippings the following lines on "Poetry" were quoted from the American poet and scientist, James Gates Percival, who himself wrote for newspapers in Connecticut :

The world is full of poetry — the air Is living with its spirit; and the waves Dance to the music of its melodies. And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veil'd And mantled with its beauty : and the walls That close the universe with crystal in, Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim The unseen glories of immensity, Its harmonies too perfect and too high For ought but beings of celestial mould. And speak to man in one eternal hymn. Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.

6 PREFACE

The old picture of tlie author as a child of five years was made in 1860 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her father. Dr. Wm. B. Harrell, was conducting a preparatory school. The poems were mainly written between the years 1883 and 1888, just before and after the thirtieth year of life, though some of the poems are of recent composition. A number are without date.

The poems first appeared under the pen-name, "Carine, " an abbre^T.ation of the composer's middle name. They appeared in various North Carolina papers; mainly, The Clayton Bud, The Tivin-City Daily, The Winston Sentinel, The Greenshoro Patriot, The Bihlical Recorder, which has outlasted most of its contemporaries, and is still vigorous; a few appeared in The Selma News, and The Methodist Advance. The one never published before is "The Sentinel," p 154. The home of the author is Clayton, North Carolina.

Though but a boy myself at the time, I recall the mode of composition of these poems. They were dashed off between duties, thought out while following household cares, — the feet of metres might literally have been stepped off — written down on any scrap of convenient paper, usually with a pencil, with a large blue book held on the lap for a writing-desk, never polished or revised, often appearing without even correction of proof, and never ^adding anything more substantial than free subscriptions and local fame. The author sang in rhythm and rhyme because

PREFACE she loved to sing. Her unusual sensitiveness to the vicissitudes of life demanded expression. The poems are without historic connections, except as they may suggest the romantic verse of Lord Byron, her favorite poet.

How far are the poems biographical? Certainly they are so in the seasonal and religious verse. True religious feeling lies behind the longest division of the poems, which were written before the popular advent of the more liberal theology. Perhaps the note of sadness and suffering is the dominant one in this symphony of life, relieved, however, by a living faith in the future. The key is minor, but there is harmony. This religious faith, coupled with a temperamental sympathy with the sorrows of life, reveal the author's spirit.

Essentially, these are songs of sentiment, romantic and religious sentiment. A quality of self-control prevents noble sentiment from becoming ignoble sentimentality. In the romantic verse, imagination works with sympathy in expressing feelings of the soul not necessarily biographical. Yes, sentiment and sympathy are the two secrets of this verse, coupled with facility in rhythmic and rhymed expression. There are half a dozen forms of end-rhyme, the abcb form being the favorite; and over a dozen rhythmic forms, the quatrain of iambic tetrameter alternating with the iambic trimeter being the favorite.

By sentiment the world is chiefly moved. The old songs with their associations of childhood find us and

PREFACE stir us. Liberty, equality, fraternity, and love are human sentiments. Sentiment is the souFs feeling for the ideal. One illustration of it is one's devotion to the flag of his country, which he follows even at the sacrifice of life. Sentiment is the greatest motive force. The cultivation of the sentiments through the reading of poetry is a part of education.

The editor's part has been slight, to select, to group, and to arrange. The poems of ''Attachment" are so arranged as to tell a story of requited love, absence, and re-union. This is of course factitious and not the order of composition, but it may increase the pleasure of reading. There are almost no poems of love-making. As with Ibsen, the action begins after all that has taken place. The successive divisions suggest a natural history of the universal sentiment of love, beginning with attachment, and followed successively by hopes and fears, estrangement and reconciliation, constancy, memories, soitows and losses ; then comes the reflection of the human emotions in nature, a favorite theme always with the poets, found here in the seasonal verse ; and finally, like the sevenfold Amen, comes the spiritual interpretation of our fragmentary and unsatisfying existence.

In sending forth this little volume, the editor is indeed moved by the sentiment of filial piety, and also by the desire to enlarge the circle of friends to whom these verses once gave pleasure.

December 20, 1916.

Table Of Contents

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Pbeface 6

In Dreams of Light 13