Contents - BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD - INDEX TO CHAPTERS - INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHIES - INDEX TO AUTHORS

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.

III. Poets of the Civil War II

§ 18. Sallie A. Brock

In 1869 appeared The Southern Amaranth, characterized by its editor, Miss Sallie A. Brock, as “a carefully selected collection of poems growing out of and in reference to the late war.” In the preface of March, 1868, she expresses a wish to render to her Southern sisters “some assistance in gathering up the remains of the Confederate dead.” Her regret is that “a vast number of beautiful and worthy productions are compelled for want of space to be crowded out of this volume.” In florid style she exclaims:

The Muse of the Southland is one of tireless wing, and though her theme is lofty and glorious as the golden sunset splendor upon the purple sky of evening, her song is often as sad as the weary echoes of the winter wind through her matchless forests—the mournful wailings of broken hearts.

The most striking new features of the volume are Timrod’s Ode on the Confederate Dead (written in 1867) and Dr. Ticknor’s Little Giffen of Tennessee, which, though probably written in 1863, was not published until October, 1867, in The Land We Love. The latter poem is not given, however, as it appears in the revised form of later years, the last stanza being especially faulty.