[In the following excerpt, Becker discusses Hayne's sonnets and presents illustrative examples of his poetry.]

Paul Hamilton Hayne is sometimes called the Longfellow of the American sonnet. The title is extravagant, of course, for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow will always remain supreme as America's sonneteer. Hayne's contribution to this poetic form was a hundred and fifty sonnets, a number equalled by no other American poet. Sharpe included seven of his sonnets in his Anthology, but called him, “the impassioned but too regardlessly profuse singer of the South.” Undoubtedly his rank would have been higher and more permanent, had he exercised greater restraint. The poet recognized that diffusiveness was a characteristic weakness of his poetry, particularly his narratives. While it is evident that the sonnet appealed to him because of its beauty and artistry, he also knew that the rigid rules which govern this form were a check, which enabled him to limit his descriptions and repetitions.

In a review of Hayne's first volume, Poems, John Reuben Thompson, editor of The Southern Literary Messenger, said:

In a particular sort of versification, the sonnet, which we do not much affect, but which has been deservedly admired in the hands of Wordsworth, Mr. Hayne is without a rival in American Poetry.¹

The Mountain of Lovers, which Hayne published in 1875, contained eleven sonnets. It was reviewed by James A. Harrison, editor of Southern Magazine as follows:

The sonnets are noteworthy, Mr. Hayne succeeds in throwing into this difficult form of poetry feeling enough to make it live and glow. He is especially fond of peculiarities of nature—the storm, the star, the setting sun—and framing them like delicate etchings in the ivory frame‐work of a sonnet. His sonnets are poetic miniatures from which peep faces, experiences, scenery, remembrances; and these faces, experiences, scenery and remembrances are dipped in a light peculiar to Mr. Hayne's genius.²

That Hayne was a literary craftsman, who polished his sonnets before publishing them, is evident by the revisions that he made in them, when they were republished in other volumes. In the preface to Sonnets and Other Poems, he wrote of Petrarch and his custom of often spending several months in composing a sonnet. To F. B. Stanford, an associate editor of The Sunday School Times about 1859, he wrote, “often I have labored on a sonnet for hours every day during a whole week, changing the punctuation, capitalization or wording.”

A careful study of Mr. Hayne's work reveals the man as well as the poet. His emotional nature was displayed in his political sonnets, which were filled with patriotic fire, martial vigor, and the intensity with which he denounced politicians. His philosophical sonnets were imbued with serene thoughtfulness, and far reaching insight into the secrets of humanity. One of his best is Comparison:

I think ofttimes, that lives of men may be
Likened to wandering winds that come and go,
Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow
O'er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee.
Some lives are buoyant zephyrs sporting free
In tropic sunshine; some long winds of woe
That shun the day, wailing with murmurs low,
Through hunted twilights, by the unresting sea;
Others are ruthless, stormful, drunk with might,
Born of deep passion or malign desire:
They rave 'mid thunder peals and clouds of fire.
Wild, reckless all, save that some power unknown
Guides each blind force till life be overblown,
Lost in vague hollows of the fathomless night.

Hayne's sonnets were simple, passionate, direct, neither overloaded with ornament, nor without its graces. His personal sonnets were touched with tender self‐denial, and as in “Soul‐Advances,” often enabled the reader to catch some gleam of the inner life of the man:

He, who with fervent toil and will austere,
His innate forces and high faculties
Developes ever, with firm aim and wise,
He only keeps his spiritual vision clear;
To him earth's treacherous shadows shift and veer
Like the mists o'er crowding windless skies,
Where through oftimes to purged and prayerful eyes,
The steadfast heavens seem beckoning calm and near;
Still o'er life's rugged heights, with many a slip,
And painful pause he journeys and sad fall,
Toward death's dark strand, washed by the mystic
          sea;
There her worn cable straining to be free,
He sees, and enters Faith's majestic ship,
To sail—where'er the voice of God may call!

“Soul‐Advances”

Hayne's sensitiveness was displayed in his descriptions of nature in its varying phases, and his reactions to life around him. In The Mountain of Lovers his sonnets reveal the poet in a solemn mood. He chose to portray nature in its rougher aspects, such as March winds, mountain storms, and twilight loneliness. The most outstanding of these is:

Last eve the earth was calm, the heavens were clear;
A peaceful glory crowned the waning west,
And yonder distant mountains' hoary crest
The semblance of a silvery robe did wear,
Shot through with moon‐wrought tissues; far and near
Wood, rivulet, field—all nature's face—expressed
The haunting presence of enchanted rest.
One twilight star shone like a blissful tear
Unshed. And now, what ravage in a night!
Yon mountain height fades in its cloud‐girt pall;
The prostrate wood lies smirched with rain and mire;
Through the shorn fields the brook whirls, wild and white;
While o'er the turbulent waste and woodland fall,
Glares the red sunrise, blurred with mists of fire!

“After the Tornado”

Hayne's love sonnets are passionate, with the instinct of youth colored with the glow of early imagination, and subdued by the delicate modesty of a chastened, yet evident, desire. The tributes to his friends, writers whom he admired—Thomas Carlyle, Algernon Swinburne, Alexander Stephenson, Margaret Preston, Jean Ingelow and George Boker—are eloquent and final.

The affairs of the world come only seldom into Hayne's sonnets. However, in the Complete Edition, two sonnets reveal his attitude toward the Civil War, and its effect on the Southern people. At all times in this poetic form he was free from the imitative influence which characterized his narratives, and sometimes his lyrics. Tennyson praised them as the best of American sonnets.

In the last years of his life, when Paul Hayne had achieved a degree of success, and his financial difficulties had in a measure been adjusted, the improvement in his welfare was reflected in his poetry. His sonnets at this time display a calmness and mellowness. The best known of this class is probably:

Yes, found at last,—the earthly paradise!
Here by slow currents of the silvery stream
It smiles, a shining wonder, a fair dream,
A matchless miracle to mortal eyes;
What whorls of dazzling color flash and rise
From rich azalean flowers, whose petals teem
With such harmonious tints as brightly gleam
In sunset rainbows arched o'er perfect skies;
And see! beyond these blended blooms of fire,
Vast tier on tier the lordly foliage tower
Which crowns the centuried oaks broad crested calm,
Thus on bold beauty falls the shade of power;
Yet beauty still unequalled fulfills desire,
Unfolds her blossoms, and outbreathes her balm!

“Magnolia Gardens (Near Charleston, S. C.)”

As a summary, it is not too much to say that in the sonnet‐tradition of the North, while Hayne must be classed as inferior to Longfellow, he does rival James Russell Lowell. In Southern tradition he not only surpasses Simms, Poe, Timrod and Lanier in the number of his sonnets, but also in poetic genius.

Notes

1. The Southern Literary Messenger, XXVII, 1856.

2. James A. Harrison in Southern Magazine, XXII, 1875.