Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/304

CHAPTER III Poets of the Civil War 1 1 The South AMONG the many reasons that have been suggested for the lack of hterature in the ante-bellum South — the absorp- tion in politics, the pre-eminence of the spoken word as compared with the written, the absence of centres of thought and life — must be considered the failure of the people^as a whole to appreciate the literary efforts of their writers, and, what is more important, the failure of writers of talent to devote themselves to literature as a profession. The popular orator, WiUiam L. Yancey, expressed the views of many when he said in a grandiose way: "Our poetry is our lives; our fiction will come when truth has ceased to satisfy us; as for oiu: history, we have made about all that has glorified the United States." A. B. Meek, author of The Land of the South, in the preface to a voltune of his poems (1857) said: "The author is not a poet by profession or ambition ; he has written only at long intervals or at the instigation of trivial or transient causes. The present volume is composed of occasional effusions through many years of my life. " Some years later Margaret J. Preston wrote to Hayne: Poetry has been only my pastime, not the occupation or mission of my life, which has been too busy a one with the duties of wife- hood, motherhood, mistress, hostess, neighbor, and friend. ... I think I can truly say that I have never neglected the concoction of a pudding for the sake of a poem, or a sauce for a sonnet. Art is a jealous mistress and I have served her with my left hand only. Of a great many Southern poets, then, it may be said that they were "amateurs quick to feel the poetic instinct and the in- fluence of other poets, content with an occasional poem or a 288