Selected poems

Foreword

In loving memory of my brother, the late Judge Walter Malone, this book of selected poems is published. The contents of the volume consists of a large number of unpublished poems together with selections made from his many volumes, including the Epic, Hernando De Soto.

The sketch of his life is written by Frazer Hood, Ph. D. During brother Walter's later years Dr. Hood was one of his most intimate, personal and literary friends.

Ella Malone Watson.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks are due the following publishers in giving permission to reprint: To Chas. Scribner's Sons for Solace and Prayer Before Planting Trees; The Four Seas Company for Union of the Seas; The Methodist Quarterly Review for Life and Works of Walter Malone.

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Foreword iii

Acknowledgment iv

In Praise of Myself x

Life and Works of Walter Malone xiii

Preface to a Book of Poems xxvii

Toiler and Idler 1

Memorial Day 3

Forgotten Heroes 5

Abraham Lincoln 6

Robert E. Lee 6

Forrest in Memphis 7

The Return of Dewey 9

America and England 10

America at Manila 10

The Battle 12

The Captured Battleship 12

Cuba Free 14

A Night in Cuba 15

My First Book 16

To an Unknown Reader 16

The Humbler Poets 18

The Poet to His Book 19

To a Poet 21

The Death of Poetry 23

Sonnet on My 21st Birthday, February 10, 1887 23

The Reading Boy 24

The Whistling Boy 25

In an Old Library 26

-Opportunity 27

The World is My Home 28

Omar in Heaven 29

The Penitentiary 33

The Potter's Field 37

The Churchyard 41

Mary 43

To One Departed 44

Confirmation 44

Alone in New York 45

On Returning to New York 46

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Ode for Charter Day in New York, May 4, 1898 48

Union Square 49

To A Stranger 51

A Stranger in London 52

Ode for the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the

Sigma Chi Fraternity, Oxford, Ohio, June 28, 1905 54

The Tree in the City 55

The Charms of the City 56

Sunrise in the Country 58

Mountain Brook 60

Bohemia 62

Pasadena 64

Carroll Vance 65

The Alps 66

The Bay of Naples 68

The Laurels 71

The Soldier of Fortune 72

The Sleeping Idlers 73

The Right to Work 75

The Klondike 78

Success and Failure 79

UNPUBLISHED POEMS

Prayer Before Planting Trees 80

To Mike Connolly on his 62nd Birthday 83

A Gift of Flower Seeds 84

The Lights of the City 86

The Dying Tree 89

The Agnostic's Creed 91

The Union of the Seas 95

To a Judge 100

The Lad in Handcuffs 101

The Soldier Boy 102

Had Lincoln Lived 103

The Greek Boy 106

The Rebel 107

The Dried-up Stream Ill

Sleep 113

The Son of Adam 115

Annie Laurie 119

The Song of the Frogs 120

Edgar Allen Poe, 1809-1909 121

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Whence and Whither 122

From Low Beginnings 123

Conquest of China 123

In Praise of Righteous War 125

The Haunted House 127

Epitaph for a Friend 127

To a Mocking-bird Singing in October 128

Mother and Child 129

FROM HERNANDO DE SOTO

The Earthquake 130

The Heart's Desire 132

Solace 133

To an Enemy 133

Religion of Brotherhood 134

Frank Fawcett McKernan 137

Will Hubbard Kernan 138

Annie Cook 138

Past and Present 140

Solitude 141

The Queen of the Valentines 143

For Mildred 145

Fireside Fancies 147

An Unsent Letter 148

La Paloma 149

Portrait of Henry Timrod 151

Portrait of Michael Angelo 152

On a Beautiful Portrait by an Unknown Artist 153

Poe's Cottage at Fordham 154

Homer 155

Byron 157

Napoleon and Byron 158

Byron Centenary, 1788-1888 159

Shelley . 159

Tribute to Shelley 160

The Tomb of Galileo 161

Melba 162

Holland 164

Saint Augustine 165

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San Gabriel Mission 166

The Everglades 167

Noon in the Tropics 167

A Mexican Wayside Station 168

At the Cathedral of Mexico 169

In a Tropical Garden , . . . . 171

Beside the Danube 172

At the Paris Morgue 173

The Desert 174

The Dove of the Desert 176

The Humming Bird 181

The Mocking-bird 182

The Oriole 187

The Wood Thrush 191

The Redbird 192

The Blackbirds 196

The Savannah 196

The Old Mansion 197

The Dunghill and the Moon 198

The Fallen Gods 201

Orchids 204

The Moon-flower 204

L'Amante Du Diable 206

A Defiance 210

Life 211

Idyl of Spring 211

One Summer 213

A Storm in Summer 216

By the Summer Sea 218

A Night in June 219

Mississippi in June 220

July Noontide 221

Drought 223

September in Tennessee 224

October in Tennessee 226

Sunset in Tennessee 227

Autumn in the South 228

An Autumn Morning 229

A Mississippi Swamp 230

To a Friend 231

I Love Thy Faults 232

Mary of Jonesburg 232

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The First Transgression 233

Geraldine Gray 235

Will You Love Me Still 237

The Morning-glory 238

Bridal Ballad 239

The Bachelor 240

Scorn Not The Heart 241

Edith Adair 242

To One I Shall See No More 243

To One Who Shall Be Nameless 244

A Southern Love Song 246

The Lore of Love 247

He Who Hath Loved 248

The Swan of the Slums 249

Martyrdom 250

Tempted 251

The Resurrection 253

The Witch of the Wine Glass 255

Little Sweetheart 257

Morning and Evening 258

Zola 259

Ponce De Leon 261

Narcissus 277

To Dr. J. J. Wheat 296

A February Sunset 297

Out of the Fold 298

Jesus Wept 301

Burial of an Old Slave 303

Renan's Life of Jesus 305

The Hymns of Charles Wesley 306

Epitaph for Myself 307

[ ix ]

Though many my faults, and my passions strong, and sins

of Self were to down, I have forged ahead, and my brow deserves, though never

it wear, a crown.

So I praise myself for the fights I fought against all the

hosts of hell, Though I knew at last was a greedy grave, and a shroud

and a funeral bell.

I have trod the path which, I know not why, leads on to

the lonely tomb, And never a man or seraph or saint more boldly has

marched to doom.

I care not what sage or sophist might do, what higher

beings might say, What counsel of man, what wisdom of God, may have

shown a better way ; Had they fought like me, had they bled like me as they

crept through earth to die, I would challenge them all to take up my lot and bear it

better than I.

I have asked for aid from the sons of men — they have left

me all alone ; I have prayed the gods for a loaf of bread — they have

always given a stone.

So I clenched my teeth, and doubled my fists, and I fought

to hold my own, And the mobs of men, when I helped myself, have begged

me accept a throne.

So little I care if they say my words are vanity, pomp or

conceit, For I know that Self and Self alone, can bring me a mess

of meat.

So the little tin gods of the old-time bards I shove in dust

on the shelf, And asking no leave of a living soul, I take off my hat to

myself.

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Age Six Years

Age Sixteen Years

Age Twenty Years

Age Tliirtvj Years

WALTER MALONE— HIS LIFE AND WORKS

The past quarter of a century has witnessed some significant additions to Southern literature. In fiction and in essay, Southern writers have achieved a success which challenges the attention of readers beyond the limits of national boundaries. They have broken the bands of provincialism, which formerly were conspicuous in so many of them, and to-day they write with a vision whose horizon is national in its sweep. In the field of poetry, also, Southern genius has produced creative results; and while this creative activity has invented no new forms of verse, it has breathed into the old forms a dewy freshness and a wholesome sanity.

Among Southern poets, Walter M alone ranks subordinate to none. Indeed, there are reasons — which I shall set forth in this paper — strong enough, it seems to me, to justify the conviction that he deserves the foremost place, not only among Southern poets, but among American poets as well. There is, however, an infirmity of mind, a kind of mental hyperopia, that blurs our perception of a contemporary artist and his art. We never feel quite certain that the image we get upon our mental retina is a true one, and we hesitate to hazard a judgment of values.

European critics, viewing Poe's art, outre mer, got a perspective that the poet's compatriots were unable to get. We are still disputing among ourselves whether Walt Whitman is a poet at all or not, while to foreign critics he bulks large on the Western shores, the most original of the

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new- world poets. Walter Malone being so near us, it is not to be wondered at that our envisagement of him is far from clear-cut and perspective.

If our analogy between a judgment of values and a sense-perception be permissible, then it is further true that the distance required for a clear focus is directly proportional to the greatness of the achievement. Longfellow and Lowell needed not to be removed in time for our American eyes to see them clearly, but Poe and Whitman did. In the two former pulsed a lesser genius than glowed in the two latter. The beauty that the New England poets felt and perceived was that our familiarity with great poetry had already revealed to us, and their genius was rather that of translating into American idiom what the great masters had uttered in the "grand style."

Walter Malone is one of our American poets whom the critics have reserved for some future attention. It may be that time will bury his memory "deep as the hidden sleep" of those who lie in some forgotten churchyard; but my judgment is that the future holds for him a fadeless crown of amaranth and gold.

II

Walter Malone was born February 10, 1866, in De Soto County, Mississippi, about thirteen miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee. He was the youngest of a family of welve children. His father, Dr. Franklin Jefferson Malone, was a man of culture and prominence in Mississippi, serving his State as a member of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1868. In earlier years he had seen service in the Mexican War as an army surgeon. He died in 1873. Thus deprived of a father's care at the age of seven years, Walter did not have those advantages which the older children enjoyed; but his mother, a woman of rare powers, made amends for the loss as only a woman can do. She managed to give her younger children such educational advantages as the local schools afforded. At the

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age of six years Walter was initiated into the mysteries of formal learning at an "old-field schoolhouse," which stood across the State line in Tennessee, three miles from his home. He continued his attendance here until he was sixteen, trudging the distance from his home every day except when work on the farm required his presence there. During these ten years his young soul unfolded amid the influence of Nature. His spirit was always responsive to the music of birds and water brooks, to the beauty of Southern flowers, and to the grandeur of tree and hill. His early life is reminiscent of Burns who meditated in the opening furrows and caught inspiration for his earlier poems when his young muscles were fatigued from the toil between plowhandles.

When twelve years old he made his first attempt to imprison his fancies and emotions in verse. Always a stern critic of his own work, he later destroyed all these boyish efforts. Between thirteen and fourteen he wrote several articles which were published in the Louisville Courier- Journal. Thus encouraged, he began, at fourteen, seriously to write, and continued with adolescent zeal until he was sixteen, when he published his first volume under the title, "Claribel and Other Poems." This was a book of three hundred pages and contained two long narrative poems and a number of shorter ones. While the poems are crude, revealing the touch of youth, they contain the promise and potency of awakening genius. It was the largest book of verse ever printed by a boy under twentyone.

In the fall of 1883 he entered the preparatory department of the University of Mississippi, where in due course he became a freshman and graduated in the class of 1887. He was not a student after the old time professors' ideal. He never liked mathematics, and until his last two years was a rather indifferent student, giving more time to the library than to the formal work of the class-room. He became early associated with the college magazine, and during his last year was its editor-in-chief.

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In 1885 he published his second volume, "The Outcast and Other Poems." Even a hurried reading will reveal that these poems are less juvenile and show a steadier power. This book brought forth favorable comment from Edmund Clarence Stedman and Oliver Wendell Holmes. John Greenleaf Whittier, writing to the author, said: "The book gives promise, but it is not what it would be were the author ten years older. Why, at thy age, I could not make a respectable rhyme."

After his graduation, Mr. Malone was admitted to the bar at Oxford, Mississippi, and shortly thereafter came to Memphis to engage in the practice of law. He launched himself with a strong initiative into the practice of law, and until 1 891 his Muse was neglected. In the next year he published "Narcissus and Other Poems." Two years later came from the press "Songs of Dusk and Dawn." In 1896 followed "Songs of December and June," a little volume of twenty lyrics; and the next year "The Coming of the King," a collection of eight short stories. Such writers as Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Charles Dudley Warner and Edgar Fawcett were high in their praise of this work.

In 1897 he retired from the practice of law and moved to New York, where, for the next three years, he gave himself wholly to literary work. In 1900 he returned to Memphis and published "Songs of North and South," a collection of poems that had appeared in magazines during the previous three years. This volume introduced the author to British readers, receiving generous welcome from Alfred Austin, Israel Zangwill, and English and Scott reviewers. In 1904 he published a complete edition of such of his poems as he considered worthy of perpetuating. In 1906 appeared "Songs of East and West," a book containing twenty-seven poems, many of them being pictures of travel in Europe, California, Florida, Cuba, and Mexico. His most widely known poem, "Opportunity," was published in Munsey's Magazine in 1905.

There is a pretty little incident connected with this poem, which the author told me of, and which very few,

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even of his intimate friends, know. I relate it because it illustrates not only what I have just said, but also because it gives a side glance of his fondness for children. Briefly, the story is this: One evening while sitting with some friends in a cafe in New York, a little lad of six years came over to the table where the poet sat, and asked: "Is this Mr. Malone?" "Yes," relied the poet. "Well, Mr. Malone," began the boy, "I want to thank you." "Why so, my little man?" "Because, if you had not written 'Opportunity,' I would not be here to-night." The father, coming up, explained how he had become discouraged in life and resolved to commit suicide, but while arranging his affairs, the poet's "Opportunity" fell under his eye, and changed his whole design. A year afterwards, the little lad was born.

Whatever may be the surer judgment of the critics as to the value of this poem, it is a lyric that awakens a response in the common man's breast, and makes him feel stronger for the day's work and superior to the day's faults and failures. In 1905, on petition of practically all the Memphis bar, Mr. Malone was appointed Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Shelby County, and later by election held the office until his death, May 18, 1915.

Ill

I am writing this on the fourth anniversary of his death, and as I write there comes to my ears the plaintive music of his poem, "To An Unknown Reader":

In years to come, when I have passed away, Your careless glance upon this page may fall ;

So then, my unknown reader, pause I pray, And hearken to my faint and far-off call.

unknown reader, for your sake I pine ; Beside you let me cease my wandering.

1 love you ; let me take your hand in mine

And tell you stories, laugh or weep or sing.

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From death's dark empire shall my soul depart, Your smile, your friendship, and your love to win;

Behold! I come and knock upon your heart: For God's sake, reader, rise and let me in!

These lines, so remindful of Beethoven's "Farewell to the Piano," disclose at once a boldness and a childlike unconsciousness not found in a lesser soul.

To those of us who knew him, Mr. Malone was the most modest of men, in whom verily there dwelt no guile nor conceit. But his graces of mind were plenteous, and he had "a memory like the British Museum Library," and its material arranged as orderly. His interests were universal, and whether the discussion, in a company of friends, turned to the merits of champion chess-players or to great events in history, to the name and habitat of some littleknown flower or to the latest discoveries in science, he was equally at home, and generally astonished us by the accuracy of his knowledge. He was a keen scholar, a keen artist, and withal a man of modest demeanor, free from those eccentricities and conceits so commonly associated with men of genius. His poetry was the chief concern of his life, and he toiled at uncongenial tasks for the bread that perisheth, only that he might be able to give forth from his soul that which is imperishable. Spinoza, polishing lenses during the day that he might write philosophy at night, presents us with a companion picture. While Judge Malone achieved an enviable eminence in his profession, he never valued this success.

From long familiarity with his poetry, and from a careful study of its qualities, I am convinced that posterity will make amends for the neglect into which contemporary readers and critics have allowed his poetry to fall.

IV

The poetry of Walter Malone is no ordinary verse. The sheer quantity of it compels notice. No poetry can be measured alone in terms of volume; but if the other

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qualities that go to make great poetry are to be found also, the quantity is a factor that must be given its meed of worth. It is because I find so many evidences of exquisite imagery, so many instances of those characteristics of fine poetry that one must rather feel than describe, I have no timidity in asserting his claim to genius. Lovers of poetry delight in quoting you Browning's fine lines,

That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture,

as an example of this indescribable quality of poetic power. In the poetry of our author are many examples of the same power. Describing the strange beauty and melancholy of submarine life, he says:

But never trills or warbling wake those bowers; No sound uprises in those songless realms ; The petals of those blossoms never thrill Or tingle with embraces of the bees.

Humming-birds seen in tropical forests are,

bright banditti of the Southern skies That rifle sylvan hordes of honey dew.

And again, take those lines descriptive of the first feelings of love in the adolescent heart:

Love then was light as the feet of a fawn, Brilliant of brow as dazzle of dawn, Jocund as June, unwearied of wing, Hearing his heart like a goldfinch sing.

And one more example from a Croesus-wealth that makes selection hard :

And that longing for their labor in the freemen's hearts

shall be Like the green blood of the springtime, tingling in the turf

and tree.

(Note the use of "blood" from its common association with color to its truer association with function.)

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The range of his poetic vision is as broad as the world itself. He has given us many love lyrics that burn with passion, many that ache with a sorrow that dews the face of a Niobe in tear-drops sharp as acid. There are poems of awakening love; there are poems of youthful love; and songs of wedded bliss enjoyed far into life. Then there are delicate portraits that glow in the bosom of his volumes like cameos fine-cut. Take that most beautiful of them all, the portrait of lovely Isabel when first her beauty burst upon the soul of De Soto :

Oh, she was lovelier than an April morn, With April skies, and April birds and bloom, With April songs, and April suns and showers, Now laughing and now pouting, now in tears, But ever bringing visions of delight.

No one but a poet unconscious of his gift would have hazarded such an adjectival repetition, and none but a master could have achieved such result.

He loved children, and some of his most cunning workmanship is expended in exhibiting boy-life with its wild, care-free days. Here is one of his boys:

Along the street

His brown bare feet Remind me of a baby faun,

By fern-fringed pool

In shadows cool Leading a throng of fluting birds at dawn.

No hermit thrush

Through woodland hush Could trill a tune more fresh and free ;

No mocking-bird

More gladly heard Through verdant vine-clad swamps of Tennessee.

Then there are poems of wild fancy that startle us by their very boldness. Take, for instance, that weird conceit suggested by Coleridge's line,

Woman wailing for her Demon Lover. [ xx ]

The conception is poetic to the core. After a few stanzas describing the overthrow of Satan in heaven and his casting out, the woman who had beheld his defeat speaks:

Here I come to meet thee, Satan, ruined king whom I adore, Thou, my prince, my lord, my master, and mine idol evermore !

Now I see thee come to meet me, and I rush within thine

arms, While my bosom bounds with passion for thy wild and

wondrous charms.

I, the seraph, blest and beauteous, robed in radiant starry

H g ht ' .

With my golden locks encircled with the lilies pearly white ;

I, that soar on swan-like pinions, blossom-bosomed,

flower-fair, I, with eyes like lucid dew-drops, twinkling in the azure air;

I have come to meet thee, Satan, with thy wings of ashen

gray.

Seared with sins and seared with sorrows that shall never

pass away!

No excerpt from this poem can do it justice, and one must read it through to get the full force of its stately rhythm and its weird passion.

As an illustration of his calmer mood which reveals his sensitiveness to friendship, the following lines, "To a Friend," may be recalled:

Tormented sorely by the chastening rod, I muttered to myself, "There is no God!" But, faithful friend, I found your soul so true, That God revealed himself in giving you.

Time would fail me to speak of all the themes that attracted his fancy. There are poems dealing with economic conditions; there are descriptive sketches of landscapes in many lands; sunsets burst upon us in his pages with a variety of forms and colors like those the Divine Artist

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throws upon the evening sky. There are matchless poems on birds and flowers and trees; indeed, no poet has given us more Nature poetry than he. In it all one who reads is astonished at his wealth of simile and metaphor, at the music of his lines and the cooling freshness that delights on every page.

V

It has been remarked by Mr. M. W. Conolly that Judge Malone has given a new note to Southern literature "based upon Southern life, Southern scenes, and Nature as she appears in the South alone. The early writers of America harped on larks and nightingales which they had never heard, and on rosemary and rue which they had never seen

The mocking-bird was practically the one Southern

bird known to literature. . . . Judge Malone has taken the redbird, the bluebird, the woodpecker, the humming-bird, and others, and put them in the place of the feathered songsters of Europe of which we know nothing. He has taken the magnolia, the dogwood, the redbud, the passion flower, the trumpet flower, and others, and made them popular in literature."

While it is true as Alfred Austin said that he finds in the verse of Judge Malone "deference to the best traditions of English poetry," his was no servile imitation of it, and one of the most priceless of these traditions was that a poet was never to try to picture forth anything that he had not first seen and felt in his own experience — a perception of Nature, not the preception of some one else's perception, is demanded by "the best traditions of English poetry."

No one can read the poetry of Walter Malone who has not learned the language and felt the heart-pulse of Nature. He speaks in the vernacular of song-birds, thrills with the melody of water brooks, and palpitates with the passion that the flowers feel when the winds of heaven come a- wooing among them. "He came from the soil, and remained a son of it," as a friend expressed it. Nature was to him no

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panorama o! painted beauty. She was a mother on whose breast he could sob out his sorrows, exult in the tonic of achievement and hope, and to whom he could

unlock the sleepless brood Of fancies from his soul, their lurking place, Nor doubt that each would pass ne'er to return To one so loved, so watched, and so secure.

He was in something more than a metaphor a child of Nature, taught to speak her language, cunning to interpret her moods, and sensitive to feel her great life. While all his poetry is by no means Nature poetry, it all is suffused with her influence. One could tell, whatever mood the poet was in, whether revealing the untutored soul of pagan brave, or exposing the ugly venom in the heart of crafty Spaniard, or describing the redbird darting zigzag through the green of forest like a flame — one could note the influence of Nature through it all.

VI

When we come to study his epic poem, Hernando De Soto, we discover an entirely different attitude toward Nature. I think his treatment of Nature here discloses a conception not to be found anywhere else. Wordsworth conceived a preestablished harmony between us and the natural world so that Humanity and Nature can easily live and converse together. Tennyson, with ever- wavering faith, speaks sometimes as if Nature did not exist at all apart from our thought: "Her life the eddying life of our living soul." Browning conceived Nature as a wild, unhuman, unmoral, unspiritual being who has an elemental life, but no soul. She has a certain kind of interest in us, an interest, however, not sustained. The powers that play in Nature, if we happen to be in harmony with them, befriend us:

Their work was done — we might go or stay, They relapsed to their ancient mood.

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In the De Soto, while Nature appears in her beneficent and benign aspects, often she is "red in tooth and claw." But even here, to Walter Malone, it was not so much a Berserker rage that moves Nature in her destructive force, whether in tornado or miasmas and fevers of a tropical swamp, as it was a godlike resentment at man's shameless intrusion into her sacred sanctuary.

The Oriental bard differs widely from the Western poet in his treatment of Nature. In the poetry of the former, Nature is the great reality, man but an incident. Nature is vast, mysterious, transcendent; man a puny creature, scarcely in the thought of Nature at all, and then only as a despicable, sprawling thing. To the Western poet, Nature is but little more than a background of impalpable cloud and sky to his picture of man. Nature sometimes is the theater boards, upon which man stalks in gigantic strides and plays his part. Sometimes Nature is the Ganymede who bears the goblet to the great Olympian, sometimes the gentle Hebe adorning and enlivening the courts of men. However variant the accent, the dynamic stress is always on man. In the De Soto there is another treatment yet. Man and Nature are related not in subordinance. They are peers. Often there are dubious battles waged between them. Sometimes there is a truce, whose term is conditioned upon the observance by each of the other's rights. "The contest with Nature," says the author, "is one which all must face; it is inevitable; it is one that from the cradle to the coffin ceases not. We may live in peace with our neighbors, or we may contend with them, grow weary of strife, and agree on an armistice. But with Nature we can never negotiate a truce; between us there can be no cessation of hostilities." How strangely out of harmony does this conception seem with his treatment of Nature in his earlier poems. This is the conception presented in his epic poem. A careful study of this apparent disharmony may be resolved, I think. If there is nothing new in his treatment of Nature in his earlier poetry, certainly in his epic there is.