lood was not exactly fit to engender
genius; and that in the rich, careless Southern nature there lurks a
vein of undeveloped song that shall yet exonerate America from the
charge of poverty of genius, brought by the haughty Briton! Yes, we will
sing yet a mightier strain than has ever been poured since the time of
Shakespeare! and in that good time coming weave a grander heroic poem
than any since the days of Homer! Then men's souls shall have been
tried in the furnace of affliction, and Greek meets not Greek, but
Yankee. For we Southerners only bide our time!"

And he cut his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as
though to vent his excitement, and, setting his email white teeth
sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his
whole face contracting.

"The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he
continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need
Bellona to give tone to our orchestra."

I could not forbear reciting somewhat derisively the old couplet--

"'Sound the trumpet, teat the drum,
Tremble France, we come, we come!'

"Is that the style Major Favraud?" I asked. "I remember the time when I
thought these two lines the most soul-stirring in the language--they
seem very bombastic now, in my maturity."

He smiled, and said: "The time is not come for our war-poem, and, as for
love, let me give you one strain of Pinckney's to begin with;" and,
without waiting for permission, he recited the beautiful "Pledge," with
which all readers are now familiar, little known then, however, beyond
the limits of the South, and entirely new to me, beginning with--

"I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon"--

continuing to the end with eloquence and spirit.

"Now, that is poetry, Miss Harz! the real afflatus is there; the bead on
the wine; the dew on the rose; the bloom on the grape! Nothing wanting
that constitutes the indefinable divine thing called genius! You
understand my idea, of course; explanations are superfluous."

I assented mutely, scarce knowing why I did so.

"Now, hear another." And the woods rang with his clear, sonorous accents
as he declaimed, a little too scanningly, perhaps--too much like an
enthusiastic boy:

"Love lurks upon my lady's lip,
His bow is figured there;
Within her eyes his arrows sleep;
His fetters are--her hair!"