for venturing on the publication of his verses.
This gentleman is a graduate of Fisk University, as he tells
us in the interesting and modest preface to his volume. Thus
he belongs to the first generation since the War. His
parents, he indicates, were slaves, and his early home was
upon the "Highland Rim" of Tennessee, amid the poverty of a
freedman father's little farm. These things well weighed,
the refined love of nature, the purity of sentiment, the
large philosophy, the delicacy of expression which his poems
display, are sufficiently marvelous. One must, perhaps, deny
him the title of "poet" in these days when verse writers are
many. His ear for rhythm is fatally defective, while, so far
as one may judge from the few dates appended to the poems,
the later productions seem not to be the best. Nevertheless,
his little volume stimulates to large reviews and fair
anticipations. It is a far cry from "Swing low, sweet
chariot"--an articulate stirring of poetic fancy, but hardly
more than that--to Mr. McClellan's "September Night, in
Mississippi":

"Begirt with cotton fields, Anguilla sits,
Half birdlike, dreaming on her summer nest
Amid her spreading figs and roses still
In bloom with all their spring and summer hues.
Pomegranates hang with dapple cheeks full ripe,
And over all the town a dreamy haze
Drops down. The great plantations stretching far
Away are plains of cotton, downy white.
Oh, glorious is this night of joyous sounds.
Too full for sleep Aromas wild and sweet
From muscadine, late-booming jessamine
And roses all the heavy air suffuse.
Faint bellows from the alligators come
From swamps afar where sluggish lagoons give
To them a peaceful home. The katydids
Make ceaseless cries. Ten thousand insects' wings
Stir in the moonlight haze, and joyous shouts
Of Negro song and mirth awake hard by
The cabin dance. Oh, glorious is the night!
The summer sweetness fills my heart with songs.
I cannot sing; with loves I cannot speak."

If many thoughts and feelings such as these lie folded in
Southern cabins, let us not deny, for their unfolding, the
genial influences of literature and history and the
sciences. The race that possesses such powers, even though
undeveloped in the great majority of its members, needs Fisk