Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/307

Soldier-Poets 291 later sent to England in the hope that his poems and articles might help to win English sympathy for the Confederacy. Of the younger poets Paul Hamilton Hayne, Henry Timrod, and James Ryder Randall volunteered for service but were pre- vented by delicate constitutions from remaining in the army, though as staff officers, correspondents, or poets they followed the events of the war with the keenest interest. Henry Lynden Flash was on the staff of General Joseph Wheeler and was thus prepared by his experience to write his tributes to ZoUicoffer, Polk, and Jackson. Dr. Francis O. Ticknor was in charge of the hospital work at Columbus, Georgia, and ministered to the needs of soldiers, among them the brave Tennessean whom he made immortal in Little Giffen. Abram J. (Father) Ryan could never have written The Con- quered Banner and The Sword of Robert Lee if he had not visualized as a chaplain the heroism and tragedy of the long struggle. WUliam Gordon McCabe, who went from the University of Virginia as one of the Southern Guards, was a poet of the trenches, giving expression in his Dreaming in the Trenches and Christmas Night of '62 to the quieter and gentler aspects of a soldier's life. Sidney Lanier and John B. Tabb,' after living the romantic life of soldiers, sealed a memorable friendship by a common suffering in the prison at Point Lookout. The feeling of the South as represented by all these poets first expressed itself in music. Southern soldiers were quick to seize upon Dixie, the words of which had been written by Dan D. Emmett for Bryant's minstrels in 1859. Except for the refrain and a few haunting phrases, the words were totally inadequate, but the music proved to be the chief inspiration of Southern armies throughout the long conflict. Sung for the first time by Mrs. John Wood in New Orleans late in i860, it was taken up by the Louisiana regiments and was soon heard by the camp- fires and hearthstones of the South. From New Orleans, too, came The Bonnie Blue Flag, an old Hibernian melody, with words written by an Irish comedian, Harry McCarthy, a volunteer soldier in the Confederate Army from Arkansas. The enthusiasm aroused by its first rendition at the Varieties Theatre in 1861 is well described by a later writer. The ' See Book III, Chap. rv.