§mm\l Wimvmxi^ JitotJg THE GIFT OF /^.(?itA;!3. .... 30 Impatience , . 200 Inauguration, The 131 xii PAGE. Indirection ....... 152 Inspection . i2o Insufficiency 6 Introspection .... ... 43 loTriomphe!. . 73 Ireland's Misrule g5 Joshua, Wanted: ...... 47 Justice or Trade 86 Kansas loi Lawrence, The Defense of 89 Lessons, Our ........ 83 Liberty and Charity, Of . . . . . .64 Life and Love n^ Life's Dower 129 Lincoln, Abraham (1863) ..... 13 Long? How 53 Lost One, My . 221 Love's Fear ........ 206 " Love is Deep, My " 205 Love's Marvel ........ 17 Magdalena 176 Marriage Hymn ' . , 147 Memoriam, In ...... . 58 "Mollie" 192 Mother Remembrance 178 Name, A Man's . 163 Nameless 180 PAGE. Nannie's Picture ....■■• 3' Need You Not, We 79 Nobility :?! Notre Dame, In 30 Old Man's Idyl, An 157 Outcast, Song of the ...... 185 " Pass, But Let It " . 213 Passion ig Patience -19 Peril, In 15 Picture, A 106 Pittsburg, Hymn of 142 Poet's Wealth, The ... .... 223 Prize Fight, The 159 Progress, Voice of 125 Question, The 81 Rally! .... .... 55 Reconciliation ....... 172 Remember, I ijy " Rest, He Giveth His Beloved " ... 194 Rest, The Spirit of 147 Retrospective and Introspective .... 69 Salvete Milites! 5i Scrapbook, In a 24 Seamstress, Song of the 187 Sentinel Thoughts j»c xiv PAGE. Silence Still ..... . . 20 Slain, My n Soul's Despair, A 135 Spring, Song of 115 "Subdue You, We Will" 93 Suicide, Written on the Night of His ... 33 Summer Night 210 Swing, David 22 Sword Song, My 40 Symbolisms ........ 3 Thought, The Palace of . . . . . . 216 Tones, My Lost 224 Tress, A Golden 149 Truth, The 28 Two Ill "Vates" ........ 32 Viola's Song 17 Woman's Breath, A 168 Writing, To a Lady Chiding Me for Not . . 26 Year Ago, A 21 ILI.USTRATIONS Richard Realf in 1878 .... Frontispiece The Poet's Mother 34 Realf in 1858 and 1864 69 The Poet's Grave ....... 112 MEMOIR MEMOIR Richard Realf was born at Framfield, Sussex County, England, on the 14th of June, 1834. His sister, Mrs. Sarah Whapham, gives as the date the same month and day in the year 1832. The poet himself, in his autobiographical notes, written for the " Little Classics " series, gives the later date, and all correlative testimony goes to prove its correctness. The poet's venerable lather, writing after the death of his gifted son to the latter's. warm friend, now deceased, the Rev. Alexander Clark, D.D., of Pittsburg, declares that his son "was a child of wonders for learning." He could " read well at three and a half years old" — his mother, Martha, being his teacher, for there was no school near. He was fond of plaving preacher, of building chapels, and of gathering the neighbor children as a congregation. For a child he sang well, and was fond of giving out hymns. He often said, " It will be funny when I get to be a parson and preach! " At chapel Sunday-school he was always at the head of his class, as he was also at the day-school. Before he was nine years old he wrote a few lines on the death of some rabbits. He worked in the field at an early age, and then went "to service" for a time. As he wished to go to sea, his father went with him to the navy yard at Portsmouth. He was rejected, however, and then returned to Brighton, where an elder daughter, Ellen, was employed in the house- hold service of Sir John Cordy Burrows, M.D. The father's letter states that Mrs. Parnell Stafford early recognized the boy's ability, and aided materially in giving him a good education in the Burrow's household. After a short period of service he became a secretary to Mr. and Mrs. Stafford, and when Mr. Stafford died, he made his wife promise to care for the boy Richard. Some immature poems were published under the title of " Guesses at the Beautiful," when he was seventeen. His father writes that it was after this that Lady Byron aided him, stating that she desired to make a " farmer " of his son. This, of course, is incorrect, as Real was "articled" to a land steward in charge of the Noel estate in Derbyshire, a. business of a semi-professional character, requiring a knowledge of law and land values and uses. The boy poet had previously worked in the studio of the sculptor Gibson. His eyes, however, failed him. Mr. Realf, Sr., states, as does Mrs. Sarah Whap- ham, that Mr. John Burrows, of Brighton, England, was at the time of Richard Realf's death, and probably still is, in possession of personal papers relative to the poet, which his father and himself had gathered. These papers have never yet been made public. Sir John Cordy Burrows, by whom Richard Realf was first employed at Brighton, he being then in his twelfth year, was by profession a physician, and had been mayor of Brighton. He was made a knight on the occasion of some royal visit, as is the custom in Great Britain, and was a man of liberal mind and gener- ous public spirit. He was always the friend of the gifted boy, and when the first grave misfortune befell him, stood by and aided effectually, as did also Miss de Gardinier, a prominent lady in Brighton, the daughter of a retired colonel, who was well known then as the personal friend of Louis Philippe. The ex-mayor and this generous-hearted lady were the ones who helped Realf to his American career, and Dr. Loomis, of New York City, secured for him the position of assistant superintendent of the Five Points House of Industry, then the most notable beneficent institution in the metropolis. The birthplace of Richard Realf io in the midst of one of the loveliest sections of south England, the land of lush greenery, flowers, and natural beauty. It is the famous Arundel Castle, one of the homes of the Howard family, made more famous in later years by the labors of the Arundel Society in unearthing, pre- paring, and publishing the early movements, deeds, ac- counts, etc., of the feudal dukes of Norfolk. Realf was a boy of nine years when he wrote his first rhymes; he was then going to a neighboring village school through the kindness of Mr. John Whapham. This gentleman was a market gardener of considerable means, a warm friend of the Realf family, and to his son at a /ater date Sarah Realf was married. Richard Realf was the fifth child in a family of ten, several of whom died during childhood. Two of his brothers were soldiers in the British army, both becoming non-com- missioned officers, and serving with honor in the Crimea, each receiving the Victoria Cross. One brother is still living at Buxteed, where the parents also resided at the date of the poet's death. The father was a rural police- man in 1834, enrolled in the West Sussex Constabulary, a position which, in the almost minute social hierarchy of English rural life, must be regarded as quite superior to that of the agricultural laborer. He is a man of character, greatly respected in the neighborhood, and evidently endowed with much more than the average of bucolic intelligence. Martha, his wife, is also a person of superior breeding and ability. She was Richard's first teacher. It is reported that after hearing any hymn o»song twice or thrice sung by his mother, he could, when two years old, catch the words and tune and sing them perfectly in a sweet baby voice. He never worked in the field, as most village and country boys did in the rural England of that date. Mr. Whapham paid about sixty cents per week for him at the nearest school, requir- ing him only to work about his shop and garden on Saturdays in return. Richard worked also for the village undertaker, but he was a rude drinking and swearing man, and the boy could not get along with him. After this his father took him to Portsmouth, but the commandant refused to enroll him. He had two sisters " at service " in Brighton: Ellen, wlio lived in the Burrows' household, and Mary Ann, who was a domestic in that of the Staffords. Mr. Stafford was a. physician and a man of fine attainments and intellectual character, sympathetic in spirit, and was at once attracted to the handsome village boy, whose very features spoke of the effluent soul within. Richard was early transferred to the Stafford home, not as a domestic, but an amanuensis. His handwriting was always exquisitely formed, clear and perfect. The San Francisco reporter, to whom Col. Tappan handed his famous death sonnet — his "Swan Song," as I like to term it, — declared he had never seen a manuscript firmer in strokes or more clear in ensemble, even in the portion which had evidently been written after the poison took effect. Mrs. Stafford belonged to the famous Stewart-Parnell family, being an aunt to the great Irish leader. The boy poet received his education by her bounty and it was a.good one. He read well and widely, was grounded in Latin, and knew something of French. Of literature, classic and English, he had quite a wide range and possessed a severe, keen critical taste. Richard Realf, in deportment and daily life, was always as if to the " manner born,'' and that of the best school, too. Unlike other Englishmen of my generation whom I have known as winning culture and securing recognition, though born of labor and struggle, he was never too shy or overforward, he never felt any disability because of origin, or forced personal recognition. He obtained it naturally, and if tiie " blue blood " theory liad any vitality in fact, those who met him and knew not of his family associations, would have readily testified of him as a born aristocrat — a gentleman by birth. He was one by nature. The boy was radical also, in the English sense, and of the period. The glamor of '48 was still in the mental atmosphere. What Charles- Mackey, Eliza Cook, Ebenezer Elliot, and Gerald Massey had sung for Labor and Democracy, was still inspiring and uplifting. There was a social fad also in patronizing the people, when individual units of that somewhat amorphous material showed capacity above the average. In the "Little Classic" sketch already referred to, Realf describes his youthful position and surroundings at Brighton. He wrote; "At the age of fifteen or thereabouts I began to write verses — ' lisping in numbers, for the numbers came.' When some sixteen years old I hired out as ' boy-of-all-work ' to a. master mechanic in the neigh- borhood, grooming his horse, taking care of his garden, and generally discharging whatever menial duties were allotted to me. When about seventeen I grew "very weary of the gross character of my surroundings. I did not live at home, but at my ' master's,' who was a drunken and brutal man, and with the consent of my parents paid a visit to my elder sister, then living in the family of a physician at Brighton, Sussex, as a domestic servant. The wife of this gentleman, a lady of literary taste, manifested a great liking for me, and at her invitation I became her amanuensis. Two or three weeks after I entered on this new life her husband died. Shortly thereafter an eminent physician, who had paid special attention to the then new science of phrenology, visited Brighton for the purpose of deliver- ing a series of lectures on that subject before the Brighton Scientific Associaton, of which he was an hon- orary member. He was the guest of my benefactress, and became interested in me. One day he borrowed from me, ostensibly for the purpose of more careful reading, a number of my crude ventures in verse. The next morning I learned to my astonishment that in his lecture of the preceding evening he had read some of them in illustrating the organ of ideality. Brighton, the fashionable watering-place of England, was then in the height of the ' society ' season, and among his auditors were many whose names were famous in litera- ture and science. A great many people came to see me thereupon, among them Lady Byron and her daughter Ada. Rogers, the poet, sent for me, being too old and infirm to come himself. Mrs. Jameson, Miss Mitford, Miss Martineau, Lady Jane Peel, and others, also began to pet me. I had shown the possession of some slight imitative talent as a molder of images in clay, and Gibson, the sculptor, thought there was the making of a. creative artist in me. Among themselves they de- termined to publish a collection of my verses, and this was done in 1852, under the title of ' Guesses at the Beautiful,' the editor, Charles de la Pryme, Fellow of Trinity College, being a nephew of Thackeray. The little book was, of course, valuable only for what it promised, not at all for what it contained. Lady Byron grew greatly interested in me, chiefly, at first, on account of the representations made to her concerning me by Rev. Frederick W. Robertson, who resided but two doors from the home of the lady with whom I lived. "The natural tendency of it all was to make me for- getful of the honest peasant ancestry from which I sprang. So I wrote to Lady Byron, who was then, in 1853, at her country residence, begging her to get me away from these false surroundings. I think that, with the exception of my mother, she was the noblest woman I ever knew. She at once made arrangements forme to go down into Leicestershire, to her nephew, Mr. Noel, manager of one of her large estates, with whom I was to study the science of agriculture as well as prosecute my literary purposes." His sister Sarah intimates that Mrs. Stafford was over indulgent with her brother, and gave him an undue amount of pocket money, as well as jewelry. There is no doubt at all that Realf was petted a. good deal, and that by a social circle which might readily unfit him for the struggles of life. He, however, had the good sense to perceive himself this incongruity, and it was at his own request that he was sent to Derbyshire to learn the business of a land steward. He was then well on in his nineteenth year. Remaining there for a number of months, and apparently with content and reasonable success, the village household in Sussex, as well as the Byron circle at Brighton, was soon roused to disquietude by reports of Realf's disappearance, and of a social scandal in the Noel mansion. After some weeks of doubt as to his whereabouts, Richard Realf was found by his father on the streets of Southampton, in a semi- demented state, ragged, bare-footed, destitute, and sing- ing ballads for pennies. He was taken home and care- fully nursed. It appeared also that before reaching this condition in which he was found, he had lived in an ex- pensive hotel at Eastbourne, a fashionable watering- place, under an assumed name, where he run up quite a large account. This was met shortly after by his father. Some weeks had passed, during which the young man had wandered over England, indulging in acts which cer- tainly indicated a disordered mind. What had occurred has never been made clear; that there was a woman in the case, is certain. She was of the Noel family also, and several years the senior of the young poet. His sis- ter Sarah states that this lady became pregnant, and an elder brother, arriving from the continent, found Realf, and beat him unmercifully. Richard himself never spoke of it, except as, in his death poem, he sung that — He wrought for liberty, till his own wound (He had been stabbed), concealed with painful art Through wasting years, mastered him, and he swooned. And sank there where you see him lying now With the word " Failure " written on his brow. — The story indicated in that other pathetic lyric, "A Golden Tress," may also perhaps illustrate the mental as well as physical effect of the injury then received. For myself I have, after patient delving and ju- dicial inquiry, come to the conclusion that the Noel episode, in its injurious effects, mental as well as physical, (Realf always complained of periodic trouble in his head, and once told me this was due to an injury received by him when he was in his twentieth year), is mainly responsible for much of the peculiar conduct that marked his after life. In the. ofttimes over- wrought imagination, perhaps unduly " peering into the immortalities," the recurrent effect of the perma- nent injury inflicted by the spirit of brutal caste as much as by the passion of virtuous indignation, furnishes at least a rational explanation of acts that are so far foreign to all other things that are so plain in Realf'slife, that they can only be explained by temporary dementia and not by the hypothesis of overwrought and melan- cholic temperament. Realf was gentle, refined, cour- teous, "breathing freely in high altitudes of spirit," beloved by all but one who came in contact with him; yet his days are marred by strange disappearances, his life by weird passion, and his career degraded by acts of apparent dishonor. All who knew him as I knew him would defend him against such expressions, and yet they remain true, because the facts can not be ob- literated. With no desire to excuse or to extenuate be- cause my friend, in spite of all, is the David of my early and later years, admired in life and the more beloved in the decades that have followed his untimely departure by reason of the sadness I have traced and the suffering that, I have learned, clustered so bleak and black about him, I have reached the conclusion that Richard Realf suffered at times from some form of dementia. It was then that his best friends in Brighton, as well as the dear homely household in the Sussex village, deemed it wise that he should make a place for himself in the United States. His sister Mary, not long mar- ried, had already sailed over the seas and settled with her husband at Cumberland, Maryland. An aunt, Mrs. Hynes, had long before emigrated and her family still live in one of the Western States. Richard Realf landed in New York during April, 1855, and began a new and hopeful life at once at the Five Points House of Industry. One of the strongest impressions made on Realf by his youthful residence at Brighton came through his contact with a famous evangelical clergyman and orator of the established Church — the Rev. Frederick W. Rob- ertson — two volumes of whose eloquent sermons were published in this country some thirty-five years since. It was at his suggestion that Richard Realf became an active member of the Brighton Workingmen's Institute. He wrote in after days several eloquent and grateful tributes to the memory of the English divine, two of which appeared in the Christian Radical (Pittsburg) in 1871, and I find in a letter from the field, written during 1863, the following: "His voice was the rarest to which I have ever lis- tened. A blind man, being a stranger to our language, would inevitably have loved him hearing him speak; and there was no passion that he could not lull, no sor- row that he could not soothe, no devil that he could not exorcise, nor any child whom he could not charm with the benignancy of his voice. How the people of Brighton flocked to him! Peers and princesses, the artist and the poet with their fine spiritual cravings, Gunnybags, the millionaire, with his heart of a metallic hue, the fisherman from his boat, the seamstress from her needle, the plowman from his fields, and the prisoner from his cell, — all, of whatever caste, class, clique, or condition, in the light of his sublime manhood stood equal unto themselves as unto him and unto God. I have within the walls of his church witnessed the finest courtesies that I ever saw, the infection of his glorious graciousness being upon all his listeners." Another influence that affected Realf for good was that of a large-hearted American reformer, Mr. Pease, the transformer of the once infamous Five Points of New York. Realf spent sixteen-months in the House of Industry. He was as ready at the toil of teaching and serving as we in Kansas and the army found him in after days at fighting for liberty and union. During this bright period it was my fortune to meet Realf and become his friend. As chairman of a lecture committee in a young men's temperance and literary club, I in- vited him to deliver to us a lecture on poverty and labor, which he did with the heartiest interest. His days were busy ones. Elsewhere in this memoir I have sketched the work of that period. But he early be- came animated by that restless and heroic spirit which filled the "fifties" with its almost divine fury of resistance to slavery. This fresh voice was not one of sloth; its clear special tenor was resonant with protest against suffering and wrong, pure in its appeals for righteousness, and passionate in denunciation of . oppression. He made friends on every hand, and the memories then created still keep his presence as a glowing radiance. Among the letters sent me, I find one of the Five Points period written to his sister Sarah, which contains the only reference I can find to the sister and family who located in Maryland. The letter is dated at New York, July 28th, 1856. The poet writes to "dear Sallie ■■• " I have been down into Maryland and Virginia, amongst my own and your dear friends. Don't I wish you could have been with me — that's all. No, it isn't all; for then, much as I enjoyed myself, and pleas- antly as the time passed, my visit would have been a still happier one. They live 400 miles away from New York, but with our facilities for traveling it really is not much further than from Uskfield to London. We do not in America measure distances by miles, but by hours. I started at 6 o'clock at night, and had I traveled all the way without stopping, should have reached Cumberland at noon the next day. Pretty rapid — eh, Sallie ? "I heard from Miss de Gardinier the other day. I was so pleased that I couldn't help crying, when, she told me that you were to go and live with Ellen. She says Ellen is so good, which, being the case, I hope you will follow the advice and instructions of that dear sister implicitly and without questioning. Do you know, Sallie, that unhesitating obedience is the highest altitude unto which any one can attain? Not, of course, obedience to wrong or falsehood — but obedience to right and truth. I know that I used to think very differently— and so the sorrows and the agonies came; had I understood this better, these might have been spared. Wouldn't you like to come to America? I guess you would. Yes, but I don't want you to do so. What would our dear, dear father and mother do, if we should all leave them ? I should like much — much more than I can say — to see you and have you near me, but I would rather never see you than consent to your leaving England. I haven't much time to talk about this, Sallie, but my heart is very full with it, nevertheless. If father and mother were ten or fifteen years younger, then I would try and bring you all over, but that can't be now; and so I want you to stop near them "You are almost a woman now, dear Sallie, which, when I think of, makes me tremble. From my position I see so much that is fearful — and in the young too — that it makes me doubly anxious for your welfare. You will try to be very good, won't you, Sallie dear? Father and mother, you know, are growing old now, and couldn't bear much sorrow. They shall never have to endure any on your account, shall they, Sallie?" Realf's memories of his early home remained vivid to the last. I find another letter to sister Sarah, written in 1858, at the period of his John Brown relations. It can, however, be referred to here: "Chatham, Canada West, May 14th, 1858. " Good morning, my beloved sister! It is ' Fair-day' at Uckfield. Did you think I had forgotten it ? But I haven't. I never forget anything connected, however THE POET'S MOTHER MRS. MARTHA REALF distantly, with my dear home. I remember all the trees: the willow, the oak, the ash, and the poplar. I know all the hedgerows, the copses, the little brooks and the silent springs, by heart. I recollect the paths where the daisies grew; the hillsides where the prim- roses and the violets nestled; the meadows where the cowslips bloomed How many times, when I have been worn and weary, have I flung myself down on the coarse prairie grass, to shut the eyes of my senses, and open the eyes of my soul upon home. If ever you should be such a wanderer as 1 have been, roaming among strangers, cast in perilous places, O how your heart will go down upon its knees with a chok- ing cry for home! "Why, Sallie, I have sung 'Home, sweet Home,' when no eye but God's has seen me, and when no ear but His has listened; because if I had not sung it my full heart would have broken; and the tears would roll down my cheeks, and I would tremble till I could hardly sit on my horse "Ah me! dear Sallie! It is very long now since I, a little child, would wander in and out among the crowded cattle, ahd around the 'shows,' and about the swarming streets, walking in a sort of dreamy wonder, marveling at all I saw. I have passed into youth and manhood; gray streaks are among my brown hair — my cheeks are thin — there is care upon my brow. I criticise now, I weigh defects, I balance merits, I doubt, I argue, I arrive at logical conclusions; and yet, ever and anon, as to-day, the memory of some simple circumstances — some ' fair,' perhaps, or face, it may be — will steal like an old tune across my heart, smiting, as with another rod of Moses, the rock that was once my soul; and presently the hard granite will melt away with fervent heat, revealing the old perennial ■waters of blessed childhood, the everlasting beautiful- ness of the time wherein my mother called me ' Dickey.' As I grew into my 'teens,' it wounded my precocity and pride, this childish name of ' Dickey.' I thought I was too big for it, and that when I put off my ' pina- fores ' for ' round frocks,' I also ought to put o£E the childish name I have given for the manlier one of ' Richard.' I used to murmur in my heart sometimes at what I called the obstinacy of mother in adhering to the old name; but O, Sallie, what would I not give to- day if I could hear her low, sweet voice calling unto me as of yore ? How I would leap at the blessed sound — how I would rush forward to meet her — how I would kneel to ask her blessing, and how tenderly and lov- ingly I would wait upon her steps as I led her slowly home! .... Richard." This letter was written at the close of the convention which pledged its members to death in a wild, heroic effort to overthrow slavery. In August of 1856, Richard Realf determined on an act which shaped and colored all his after life, and which in its effects may be said to have wrought its graver discolorations also. It is easy to speculate on what might have come in th£ way of exalting and abiding literature if the young poet had moved in more sober and ordered ways ; but we do know, how- ever, that he nobly strove, often aided efficiently, was always the most resonant of voices, and that life became broader because of him, even if his own fell prone at last among the gruesome shadows by which his footsteps were encompassed and sometimes misled. He decided to go to Kansas and take a man's part in a man's strug- gle — that of making a State free from slavery. An interesting account of his appearance there comes to me from an old friend, and as it covers his move- ments quite fully, I insert it here: "I shall never forget my first meeting with Richard Realf. It was during those stormy and eventful days when the question of slavery or freedom for a conti- nent was being fought out on the plains of Kansas. The Missouri river was blockaded for the free-state settlers by the pro-slavery population along its banks. I had gathered a large part of young men to march overland through Iowa, to aid the free-state cause by votes, and if need be, with strong arms. " It was in September, 1856, and our party had reached Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, by rail, and from thence were mak- ing ready for their long march of over 600 miles. Senator Harlan and Gov. Grimes came and gave us addresses of welcome, and words of cheer. Teams had been procured to carry the baggage of the men, and a supply of arms and ammunition to reenforce the little Spartan band which held the decisive point in the struggle for free soil. The train was about to start, when a young man, breathless, and with face flushed with heat, came running from the cars. He inquired for me, and presented a very kind letter from Mr. Pease, of the House of Industry, in New York, where the bearer had been a teacher. The indorsement was all that could be desired, but Realf hardly needed it. Sus- picious as all were of spies and traitors in our camp, his soulful earnestness and noble devotion would have won all hearts to him. His splendid face was radiant with a grand enthusiasm, and he was made welcome. He joined in the march, and walked with his comrades. He was in my own mess, and his especial pet was young Lagrange, of Wisconsin, since a famous soldier and public man, possessing a soul of the same chivalrous type, but more fortunately balanced in intellect. Realf was always ready to do his share of every disagreeable job. If the wagons stuck in the mud, or fuel was to be gathered for the camp, or a sick comrade needed care, he was always among the first to offer his help. "He was brimful of a certain fiery energy, which seemed never to flag for a moment. He never showed nervousness or vexation. He was singularly tender and affectionate. At night, be-fore we lay down, he always embraced Lagrange and myself. Poetry bub- bled up from his heart like a perennial spring, as we lay looking up into the heavens of a clear night. He im- provised, or recalled choice stanzas of his own, or of other poets " Of Realf in Kansas I know little, as I never resided there. About a year following, on a visit to the terri- tory, I found him still as exuberant in life and poetic fire as ever. I spent a night with a party on Mt. Oread, near Lawrence, in one of the forts erected to defend Lawrence from Sheriff Jones' army of Missourians. Realf was of the party, also Cook and Kagi, who died with John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Hinton also. Later the same year I met him in New York city, and visited the Five Points House of Industry with him. Every one there seemed to love him. " Years passed and I heard from him only occasionally during and after the war. I met him again in 1874, while he was on the Pittsburg Commercial. Though time and trouble had left their marks upon him, there was much to recall my old friend and comrade. There was the same undying love of liberty, and warm ready sym- pathy for the cause of the poor. He told me of his troubles, and I knew at times that he tried to drown sorrow in drink. He was, however, steady at his work. He had many mouths to feed, and all his modest earn- ings were spent for others. " In the winter of 1876, visiting Pittsburg, I found him in the Temperance work, heart and soul. Francis Mur- phy had made thirty thousand converts to temperance, and Realf was one of the brightest. He spoke with great power at the monster gatherings and continued steadfast after the meetings closed. He told me then that he felt the stirrings of a new spiritual life, and that he would enter the field as a lecturer. His life seemed only just fairly begun, I heard of his lectures in Ohio and of his visit to the Pacific Coast. The news of his death came to me in his last poem, sent by our mutual friend. Gen. Lagrange. Of him it might be truly said as of one before: ' His sins which are many are for- given him, for he loved much.' " Realf arrived in Kansas in the middle of October, 1856. S. C. Pomeroy, James Redpath, S. F. Tap- pan, Preston B. Plumb, Edward Daniels of Wisconsin, Oscar Lagrange, afterward a. Union general, the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Thaddeus Hyatt, and, if I recollect aright, Horace White also, were among the notable members of the northern emigrant "train." He lived at Lawrence until he returned east with Thad- deus Hyatt in the early days of January, 1857, Coming back in April of the same year, he remained in the territory until he left to join John Brown in Iowa, early in the following August. He never went back. Dur- ing these months his life was one of ceaseless agita- tion and literary activity. He wrote while in Kansas at least twenty-five of his more notable lyrics, and to his three months' residence in the east is due nearly or quite a score of sonnets and love-lyrics of the purest tone and rhythmic melody. It is not necessary to follow the months of waiting and drilling at Springdale, Iowa, where John Brown with his son Owen, nine Kansas men, and one man of color, prepared themselves for that strange overture to the Titanic struggle against chattel slavery that their captain inaugurated at Harper's Ferry, Va., October 17, 1859. It would take volumes to give the interesting details of the quaint and simple life in the Iowa Quaker settlement. The men drilled and read books of tactics and war. They held lyceum and had debates that made them famous on that lonely country-side. Every- body knew they were preparing to fight slavery, every one thought it was to be in Kansas and Missouri, and the idea that the free-state war was to be carried into the Virginian Dahomey was not known until later in 1859. The brothers, Edwin and Barclay Coppoc, left Springdale to join John Brown in Maryland. As Rich- ard Realf's name has been at times in hasty and ignorant criticism attached to an anonymous letter sent in the fall of 1859, from Cincinnati, to Floyd, Secretary of War, declaring that John Brown de- signed to attack Harper's Ferry, the matter of actual xl authorship may as well be cleared up here. Until within the past two years I have always charged the writing of the Floyd letter to a Mr. Edmund Babb, of Cincinnati. In this charge I have been mistaken, and have done Mr. Babb such injury as the accusation might bring, for which I hereby express my profound regret. A brother of the two Coppocs, who served with Captain Brown, published in an Iowa periodical ( r/5i? Midland Monthly), October, 1895, his ungrounded suspicion that the warning letter was written by Realf. The state- ment was absurd on its face, however, but it had the good effect of bringing out the truth as to by whom and from what motives the letter was written. The former lieutenant governor of Iowa, Hon. B. F. Gue, told in the same periodical how he and his brother, David J. Gue, now of New York city, with a cousin, A. L. Smith, of Buffalo, were visiting Moses Sarney, the Quaker friend at whose house John Brown stayed in Spring- field. This man of peace told the three persons named of the intention to invade Virginia, and expressed at the same time his conviction of absolute failure, bring- ing death to all concerned. The young men felt the same way, and in that spirit, hoping to prevent what they considered madness, they wrote two letters un- signed, one being mailed at Cincinnati, and the other at Philadelphia. Both were mailed at " Big Rock," Iowa, enclosed in envelopes addressed to the postmasters of the cities named. The Cincinnati letter was received. The writer of the letter was David J. Gue, now an artist and xli portrait painter in New York city. After the letter was sent, the young men waited. Then came the blow at Harper's Ferry, and in common with all anti-slavery sympathizers they too rose to the measure of the issues created. Their well-meant effort was abortive, and on the whole they were not displeased that it should so be. I shall not recite the story of John Brown, or of the Chatham Convention. It belongs to another volume, and would take up too much space in this memoir. Realf was one of the leading spirits. He sustained with fiery eloquence his captain's extreme views. Of John Brown's personal influence he once said: "He possessed that strange power which enables one man to impress many with his views, and he so psychologized his associates, that, seeing only through his medium of vision, they consequently were unable to controvert his theories; therefore the movement went blindly on, For myself, too, it is certain that had I not been to New York, where^ out of reach of his great mesmeric power, I could in some sort master the questions involved, I should have been with the enterprise to the bitter end. I should, indeed, have had no other choice. Had John Brown sent a man on an errand to Hades he must have started hither, for Brown was one of God's own com- manders." Richard Realf was selected for secretary of state in the skeleton form of provisional constitution and gov- ernment under which John Brown expected to control within slave territory, the slaves he was to make free xlii by fighting for and with them. When the Chatham Con- vention adjourned, the Browns, the father and the son Owen, Kagi, Cook, and Realf, with others, went to Cleveland, Ohio. It was there decided that the revolu- tionists separate for a brief period, and Realf determined, with Captain Brown's approval, to go first to New York, and thence to England, not only to see his people, but with voice and pen to endeavor to obtain means to aid the enterprise. To this end he wrote letters to George L. Stearns and others, who were sympathetic with Captain Brown's aims, though not knowing then his plan and place of attack. There is no word to be found during the thirty-seven years of my constant research into the movements of John Brown and his men, the result of which has been embodied in another volume of mine, that warrants such a statement as was made by a writer in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, at the time of Realf 's death, to the effect that his alleged " betrayal" of Captain Brown began at Cleveland, from where he was ordered to look after Hugh Forbes (as the news- paper critic states), an English drill-master, who was, owing to a disagreement, engaged in denouncing John Brown's purpose to the leading Republican politicians. Realf went to England with John Brown's consent. J. H. Kagi, who was named as secretary of war, and was slain during the fighting of October, 1859, wrote to me some time in June asking for news of Realf, and in that letter said they had had no word from him direct since he left to go to England with the captain's consent. Realf xliii said the change of his views, not as to the wrong and unrighteousness of slavery itself, but as to the ' ' rightful- ness " of the proposed method of assault, began with his reading for the first time Wayland's " Limitations of the Human Will." And this is probably the entire truth, for there is abundant evidence to show that he worked arduously, though with no great success, to earn money lecturing while in England; that he never denied personal hostility or objection to the existence of slavery in England, France, or in the South. Col. Thomas P. Ochiltree, the well-known Texan and New Yorker, when he was a youth himself, knew Realf dur- ing the summer and fall of 1859. He greatly admired the brilliant northerner, who openly spoke of his parti- cipation in the Kansas Free State strife and against the South. Col. Ochiltree has told the writer of many such Incidents. Judge Paschall, by whose advice and action Realf was saved from mob violence, told me in Wash- ington that the poet never denied his anti-slavery feel- ings. Realf was in England and the Channel Islands from late in June till early in September. He then visited Paris and went thence to Havre, where he procured a. cheap passage to the United States on a cotton ship bound for New Orleans. In this even he had apparently no other purpose than to get a chance to see slavery in its own lair, and work his way back to Kansas. He obtained reportorial work on Tie Bee, but in some way fell under the influence of Catholic friends. He went to Mobile xliv for study, and on the 3d of October was admitted to the Jesuit College at Spring Hill, where he was baptized as "John Richard." Among my memoranda I find the following notes, which were written a short time since by one who was with Realf at the college, and is now, or was at the time of writing, a prominent church dignitary. The note that accompanied these has been lost and I do not recall the name. But here is the statement. There are some errors in date as, for example, Realf was in England in July, 1859. " About the first of July, 1859, Richard Realf came on a visit to the Jesuit fathers. He was at the college for about three months, was instructed and baptized, and, as my memory serves me, made his profession of faith, and was received into the church by Father Gaureist, then rector of the college, in the presence of the students assembled in the chapel for the customary daily mass. He left for New Orleans with the college boys on the Morgan steamship early in October. His verses were published in the New Orleans Catholic Standard, then edited by a Col. Denis." When James Redpath began, with my aid as. collabo- rator, "The Public Life of John Brown," Realf was believed by us to have died at sea. When later, as the last proofs were being read, Realf was arrested at Tyler, and garbled statements were wired north. Red- path wrote his preface thereon, and denounced Richard Realf as a " traitor." I combated that view, but it was of no use. Years after (1877) Redpath wrote to a lady in Ohio (at Xenia, I believe), replying to an inquiry, xlv and stating that his attack on Realf was unjust. He gave the explanation I have just made. Redpath's language in the book was as follows: "The latest telegraphic news makes one correction necessary. I have spoken of Richard Realf as dead, I thought that he died a natural death on the ocean. It appears that he still lives in the body; but dead to honor, the voice of conscience, and the cries of the poor. He has chosen the part of Judas and promises to play it well." He then adds to Mrs. Ann Good's inquiry (the corre- spondence and name were all published in an Ohio paper from which I copy): "You ask me why I used this language. Just as the preface was ready for the press, the news came that one of John Brown's men had been arrested in Alabama or Texas — or one of the Gulf States; that he had confessed his connection with the old hero, and had offered to betray all the secrets of the movement if he should be brought before the Congressional Committee; that his proposal had been accepted and that he was then on his way to Washington under military or semi-military escort. We all believed that Col. Realf had become a. traitor. This belief caused me to write that assault on him. The book was printed before he gave his evi- dence. " Examined by Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. Mason, of Virginia, while it is true that he told his story at great length, it is equally true that he did not betray any secrets that injured any one. I never read his evidence in full until after I wrote the preceding paragraph. I have just finished it, and write, therefore, with all the xlvi facts fresh in my mind. But as long ago as 1872 I publicly retracted and apologized for the unjust charge that I had made against Col. Realf. You will find it in the edition of my book, published by Kinney Brothers at Sandusky, Ohio. . . . " If a cloud has been cast across the path of Col. Realf by the error that I made years ago, and that I have not been fully able to atone for, I am not only willing, but anxious, that his friends should make any use that they see fit of this explicit retraction and apology." . . . The evidence Realf gave had no political importance. Its value is purely historical, linking, as it did, the struggle in Kansas with the attack on Harper's Ferry, and showing how both came to be. When Realf reached Cleveland, Ohio, after the U. S. Senate Committee had discharged him, he had some f6oo in his possession, received as witness fees and mileage. In that city he met Barclay Coppoc and Osborne P. Anderson, two of those who escaped from the Virginia mel6e. He immediately divided his money by one half, thus enabling both to reach their homes and safety. In quite a remarkable communication addressed to ttie editor (Mrs. H . F. M. Brown) of a Cleveland weekly of the period, after analyzing the conflicting conditions which went, in his judgment, to make up modern reform move- ments, he writes: "I am afraid I have been somewhat indecorously amused at the various speculations of people in regard to my former connection with John Brown. One news- xlvii paper (the Philadelphia Ledger) writes me down in a long editorial as ' quick, ardent, enthusiastic, able, earnest, truthful, sincere, utterly fearless of consequences, and with that sort of boundless faith in the goodness of others which inspires confidence and makes others good to him.' The Washington States and Union scolds me like a virago for having, it claims, made the government preserve ray life from assassination, and transport me from Texas to the North, that I might in my testimony exculpate the Republican party from the Democratic charge of complicity with John Brown's raid. Redpath, the author of the old hero's biography, conceived an impression that I had sold myself to the South, and so attached an opprobrious epithet to my name. A Demo- cratic organ in this city is mightily exercised because I have given a little money to a ' traitor ' who escaped from Harper's Ferry; and men of both parties are greatly puzzled to know how it is that I can condemn Brown's insurrection, and yet vindicate his personal character, and make donations to those who were en- gaged with him in his enterprise. And thus I answer them all: O! Brother, O! Friend, — do not perplex your- self with perpetual prying into that which will not avail you. Is it not enough that you can not understand me, without unnecessarily vexing yourself with futile effort? Perhaps you are above me, perhaps below, or it may chance that, though afar off, we are equal. If I choose to balk your criticism and baflSe your analysis, what is that to you? Look you, friend, I appeal from your customs, your rules, your measurements. I do not stand in awe of you. I will not seek to conciliate you. I will not pay you hypocritical attentions. I do not de- sire your suffrage. If I am noble, it will presently manifest itself; if I am base, I shall not always be able xlviii to conceal it. If it can show itself in no other way, it will ooze out at my finger ends. This world is God's great whispering gallery. Speak we never so low, it roars like the thunder of an avalanche. Act we never so secretly, it blazes along the dark with insufferable blinding distinctness like lightning. Hide we away in places never so silent and far removed, the fiery finger will point us out, the inflexible pursuing voice will trans- fix us with the discerning words, ' Thou art the man.' It is most egregious folly to attempt to play hide and seek with our Maker. Wherefore, if I can neither lift an arm, nor raise a foot, nor utter the slightest word under my breath, without having it thrill upward and downward to the shining pillars of heaven and the ghastly pits of hell — if I am thus encompassed with un- speakable responsibilities and thus surrounded with unutterable grandeurs which flash in upon me through all the avenues of my being — if I have entered into a spiritual contract with God, to the performance of which I am pledged by all sweetness of peace and all sublimity of repose, and the failure of my duty wherein will in- volve me in consequences more perilous than hell — what is it to me if you can not gauge me with your personal standards? Why will you leave your politics, your merchandise, your money-making, only that you may grow vexed and petulant ? If you are true, I am glad of it, for it is so much the better for you. But go your way, and leave me to go mine. If I wrong you, I am a fool; if you injure me, you are not the less so, for you thereby constitute yourself my abject debtor, and possess me with a. lien upon your soul. Let us, there- fore, be careful how we judge each other " From the early part of February to the last of August, i860, Realf is known to have been in Ohio. After leav- xlix ing Cleveland, he went to Columbus, making the ac- quaintance there, among others, of William D. Howells and John J. Piatt, who were both engaged on the lead- ing Republican paper — the State Journal. He did some work for the paper while in the city. But he did not succeed in obtaining remunerative employment, and with the remains of the money paid him as witness fees and mileage, he started probably for Cincinnati, but, feeling worn with the mental strain he had undergone, went to the Shaker settlement, at Union Village, War- ren Co., Ohio, to obtain rest and recuperation. A lady who afterward resided in Xenia, and nursed him through a severe sickness, writes of his stay in the village as follows: " He came to a village in Warren County, Ohio, in which I was living at the time. He wanted a comfort- able place to rest, as he said he had just come out of the John Brown trouble with his life. So we took him into our house. In a few weeks he was taken very ill, and it fell to my lot to take care of him, which I gladly did, as he was so young and had not a relative in this country. He continued very ill for many weeks, and it was three months before he fully recovered. When convalescing, he took great pride in giving me a history of his life, which was, of course, very interesting to me. Then he was engaged by the Believers to lecture or preach to them once a week for six months. It took him one week to prepare himself for the first of the course. The people advertised that such lectures would be delivered free to the public, and the hall was well filled. It was not long, however, before the fame of his 1 eloquence extended over the region. The press lauded him in high tones, and he continued to draw such crowds that hundreds could not gain admittance to the hall. As he proceeded with his course he grew more and more eloquent, until the religious body he spoke for declared he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. ... I never missed one lecture during the six months. It was gen- erally held as a delight to hear him, and, indeed, his whole chain of thought was full of purity, logic, pathos and eloquence." . . . The secretary of the Believers community at Union Village, whose adherents are generally called Shakers, in reply to a communication from me, writes briefly: "Richard Realf came to Union Village in March, i860. He united and became a member of the society on the 22d day of April following. We have no record of the precise time he left the community, but we think he tarried with us about five months. A portion of the time he sustained the position of a public speaker, evincing much ability and talent, and by his oratory he attracted large audiences. His conduct while at Union was altogether unexceptionable." When he left the community there was something like a religious revival in the air. The subjects of his dis- courses were such as : " The Hollowness of the World Life," "The Nobility of Sacrifice," "Purity in Life," and similar themes. The local papers referred to them as masterpieces of ethical philosophy and religious zeal. He grew restless, however; the beginnings of rebellion were in the winds; his own active nature craved broader life, and he was called to the lecture-field by the fame of his " Shaker " speeches. Two lectures were delivered at Dayton, with great success and considerable pecuni- ary reward. Other lectures were delivered by him in Ohio cities and towns on poetry and anti-slavery topics. It was at this period that his lecturing took hin to Mac-a-Cheek, the home of Donn Piatt, then just returned from a not over-creditable diplomatic career in Paris. Realf was not in poverty at the time, but, on the con- trary, must have been quite forehanded. I should not have referred to this meeting but for the fact that, sev- eral years after my friend's death, Donn Piatt gathered a handful of mire and flung it needlessly at his memory, by publication in a Chicago literary weekly of a story that the poet, a vagabond in appearance, shoeless and ragged, came to his residence with a note from some one known to him. Piatt stated that he entertained the wan- dering singer, loaned him $600, and sent him on his way rejoicing, and had never heard directly from him since. There are several bits of internal evidence that tend to a natural disproval of this queer story. In the first place, no one who knew Donn Piatt, as I did for several years at a later period, would credit him with a specially gener- ous disposition, or pick him out as a man likely to loan $600 to a shoeless, ragged man, even if he were a gifted poet and orator. Secondly, Piatt himself was well known to be in pecuniary difficulties at that time. And thirdly, as already shown, Richard Realf was by no means an impecunious wanderer at the date Piatt gave — August, i860. Realf 's lectures at Dayton, Ohio, were delivered Hi that month, and they netted him over $ioo each. Be- sides he had other funds, including the amount received from the Believers. He lectured in Mac-a-Cheek also at that date, and would hardly have done so had he been in the state of vagabondage the romancing journalist afterward described. I find among Realf's papers of that period, and subsequently, mention several times of his having lent Donn Piatt $600, which was never returned. He so informed Captain Rowland, with whom he enlisted, among others. Piatt was much abler at borrowing than was Realf , an ' the possibilities are all in favor of the latter. After the Mac-a-cheek incident, however, from about September, i860, until about July, 1862, Realf dis- appeared from the public view. With all the efforts I have made it has been impossible to trace, him for a, single day during the twenty months intervening. He himself has said that a visit to England occurred; but his sister, Mrs. Whapham, declares that none of his family or their acquaintances know of such a visit. Only one poem of that period has reached me, and it is the one entitled " Apocalypse,'' and relates to the killing of Private Ladd of the Sixth Massachusetts in the streets of Baltimore, April 19th, 1861. Perhaps the Mac-a-cheek incident, whether it was borrowing or lending, may have been the immediate cause of this disappearance. At any rate, Realf's personality passed into the void, so far as I have been able to learn. The next appearance is at the beginning of his military life liii in Chicago. Realf s enlistment is thus described by a former recruiting officer, Captain Charles Rowland, in a letter dated December lo, 1878: " In the summer of 1862 I was seated in my recruiting office, in Chicago, when one morning there walked in a bright, trim-built, intelligent-looking little gentleman, and, saluting me with a pleasant ' good morning,' asked, ' You are raising recruits for the army, I sup- pose?" Answering in the affirmative, I asked him to take a seat. Upon doing so he commenced a conversa- tion on general topics, the war, slavery, etc., which lasted probably half an hour. Ere he departed I asked him if he had any notion of entering my company, and said, if so, it would afford me exceeding pleasure to swear him in. He stated that not at that time could he answer my question, but would call again in a day or two. On the ensuing day he came again, and after another chat of, perhaps, an hour, he said: ' ' ' Captain, I am really much pleased with you, and am ready to be sworn in as a soldier.' " Accordingly I administered the necessary oath. Of course, he had told me his name — a native of England. His age or vocation I do not remember. [He was then in his 29th year.] . . . ." Captain Rowland mentions the disposal of some books and clothing, for which Realf would have no use as a soldier. The captain took his recruit to board with him, as they would be in the city for some weeks. As always, Realf's charming personality held those with whom he met. Captain Rowland writes: " I appeared to lift him out of sadness at times, for he often ran from liv summer heat to zero in a few minutes." His poetic genius soon showed itself to his interested friend, and won, he writes, "my sympathy, and at last, I might say, my affection." He spoke of his early life in Brighton and Kansas, and soon confided to the captain his connection with John Brown, his life in Texas, arrest and removal to Washington, etc. Captain Rowland writes: " I really fancy that Realf believed in the feasibility of the overthrow of slav^ government by the nucleus of men that John Brown fought with at Harper's Ferry. His imagination was, I was about to say, generally the master of his reason. His wish to gain an object in- duced him to believe it could readily be achieved; not studying about the necessary means to gain an end, he was ever liable to disappointment. But he possessed a gentle, child-like, confiding nature. There was a great deal of womanly sensibility mingled in his character. He was governed by quick impulses and too frequently was he deceived." The two gentlemen were constant companions for several weeks, and the captain testifies that intimacy increased confidence on his part. Realf desired, how- ever, to go to camp, and transportation was furnished him to Camp Butler, Springfield, 111. Correspondence was maintained between the two friends. Realf had an opportunity of promotion at an early day, and Captain Rowland released him to enable his securing a warrant position in the 88th Illinois. He was made sergeant- major of the regiment, and thus placed in line for the adjutant's commission, which came a year later. The Iv regiment was soon ordered south, and at once saw active service in the famous Perryville and Stone River campaigns. That Realf's military career was one of honor, cour- age, ability, and personal uprightness, can not be ques- tioned. With his regiment, the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, he served in the Fourth Army Corps through- out the war, under brigade and division commanders Stanley, Schofield, Sill, Lytle, Wood, and Sheridan, with Generals Rosecrans, Thomas, Grant, and Sherman, par- ticipating in all the grand series of military operations, from the march to and battles of Perryville and Mur- freesboro or Stone River, the capture of Nashville, the massive campaign of 1863, which resulted in the occu- pation of Chattanooga, the great conflict on the Chica- mauga field, the superb victory at Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge, the severe winter campaign under Hooker for the relief of Knoxville, all the marching and fighting southward to Kingston, Georgia, preparatory to the great Atlanta campaign under Sherman, with the arduous work and fighting therein, until the capture of Atlanta brought him back to Chatta- nooga, temporarily invalided with bilious fever. He was actively employed thereafter at Chattanooga and Nashville, participating in the final close at the battle of Franklin, under Schofield, Stanley, and Wood, of the Confederate attack under Hood upon General George H. Thomas and his forces in the central south; at Nashville, Tenn., through the larger part of Ivi l864 and 1865, until his departure north as a citizen, June 2ist. In the latter year he served upon the staff of Brigadier-General John F. Miller, who afterward befriended him so warmly in California, and acted, by the poet's dying request, as his executor. Occasionally, some one has written of the poet as a. "soldier of fortune," or a "military adventurer." These caviling designations are absolutely inaccurate. Realf was a conscientious and self-convinced citizen of the United States, and therefore, when defense of the assailed Union led in his view directly toward the free- dom from chattel slavery which he held to be essential to its safety, he was an honest and devoted soldier of its flag and unity. He was personally brave unto rash- ness, and won the high honor, for a subaltern, of being twice named in general corps and division orders for personal gallantry, once at Mission Ridge, where he carried the regimental colors forward under aheavy fire, the color-bearer having been shot down, thus rally- ing the line for a successful advance against rifle pits in front ; and again at Franklin, where the Eighty- eighth Illinois bore the brunt of a great resistance. In Eddy's "Patriotism of Illinois" (pajge 210) the author says that the Eighty-eighth "bore a splendid part in the battles about Nashville, fighting Forest at Spring Hill, and on the thirtieth of October, 1864, reaching Franklin, where the Illinois regiment led in a remarkable charge." Col. Smith, Major Holden, and Adjutant Realf, one of the bravest of the brave Ivii (writes Mr. Eddy), "were on horseback, not hav- ing had time to dismount, and so entirely exposed to the enemy's fire." He continues: "it was a desperate hand to hand fight, and both Generals Stanley and Wood, corps and division commanders, publicly and in person thanked the regiment and its field and staff officers by name, for the repulse of the rebel column, the safety of the Union army, and the victory of the day" (vol. 2, pp. 345-7). General Alexander McCook, corps command- er, speaks of the Eighty-eighth as follows: "This fire, not in any way diminishing, I ordered the colors forward on the works, which a moment afterward were carried, and the stars and stripes waved triumphantly on Mis- sion Ridge." The regimental adjutant was slain in this charge, and the poet sergeant-major won the vacant bar by carrying forward the flag. In one of the many war letters placed at my disposal, Realf writes to a lady correspondent who wondered at him, an Englishman, being in the American army: "I hold that he alone is an American who is true to the idea of the American Republic. There are many alien natures born on these shores; many American hearts that drew breath beyond the seas. And I think that by and by among the many lessons we shall have to learn will be that our estimates of the basis of con- sanguinity, as well as nationality, are a. good deal wide of the mark." In another letter he wrote that, born in the faith of Cromwell, and nurtured on the genius of John Milton, how could he be other than a Iviii republican, and therefore a lover and defender of the Union assailed by slavery and secession. All the Kansas comrades of the poet entered the Union army, or in a few cases, being physically unable so to do, served in the recruiting or other useful ser- vice. Several of them, like Realf , and this writer, were of English or European birth, but none the less were they most devoted Americans. And none of them are entitled to the flippant designation of " soldiers of for- tune.'' The war letters of Richard Realf, as well as the annals of his modest but efficient service, prove how alive was his patriotism. Apart from their exqui- site literary quality, these letters would prove in print an inspiration to citizenship. The poet's recognition of President Lincoln's policy and statesmanship, with his trenchant perception of the failure of others, as well as his scorn of those who plotted and hindered at home, are among the more notable expressions of soldier feel- ing. Elsewhere I have referred to the literary value of these letters, but I am by no means sure their civic sig- nificance and importance are not much greater. One of their delightful features is constant tribute to the char- acter of his soldier comrades. In front of Atlanta, on the eighth of September, 1864, he wrote to his Michigan correspondent. Miss Jordan: " Since I last wrote, what a grand consummation has been put to this Atlanta campaign! What an arduous time we had, filled with quick marches, rapid maneu- vers, swift feints, and swifter strokes of purposes; and lix how completely, intellectually considered, the inferiors of Sherman, were Johnston and Hood. Ballced and baffled, blinded and misled. Hood was ever as an auto- maton in our great leader's hands. How glad I am it is at last over, and that our poor, tired boys will have an opportunity for rest and repose before the tug of war again comes. How brave they have been — how full of uncomplaining heroism and fortitude, none but they who have marched, fought, and suffered with them, can tell. We are apt to look back regretfully upon the olden times of chivalry, as though with the departure of those days the knightly spirit went out; but I can bear testi- mony to the fact that under the rough exterior of our Union braves there beat as loyal and kingly hearts as ever throbbed in Abelard or other knight, sans peur et sans reproche.^* In an earlier letter to the same correspondent, he writes of his comrades: " That we degenerate in politeness of speech and man- ner, that we grow somewhat abrupt and rude, is quite true; indeed, I do not see how this could well be other- wise, but these matters are by no means essentials, and do not concern the purity of the soul. Standing on these battle-heights, front to front with the dark mys- teries of life and death, it is no marvel that we account of little value the slight veneering of conventional pro- prieties. But I repeat my heart's conviction when I say that, in all the attributes which form the basis of true manhood, courage, not of the flesh but of the soul — en- durance, patience, fealty to conception of truth, and sometimes pity and tenderness softer than a woman's — the men in the armies of the Union will compare favor- ably with any selection of people that can be made." Ix The temptation is great to continue and amplify these extracts, but suflicient have been given to illustrate the spirit in which Richard Realf performed his duty as an armed American citizen. It was this devotion and courage that won for him the unanimous encomiums of his associates and superiors. The most striking recognition is given in a letter to me. Under date of San Francisco, March 26, 1879, Gen. Miller writes of Realf's services on his staff at Nashville, of which city he was military commander, in part, as follows: "Realf was aid on my staff at Nashville several months. He was very intelligent in the discharge of his duty, very punctual, and faithful, always on duty, earnest, industrious, sober, and discreet. I never heard a word of complaint concerning him in any respect while he served with me, and I certainly regarded him as an oflScer of rare attainments, faithful, efficient, and intelligent in the discharge of his duty. His private character during that time, so far as I knew, was above reproach. My command at Nashville was that known as military commander of a city, and it involved what might be termed civic military rule. The duties were very arduous, thousands of people came to my head- quarters upon every conceivable errand and for almost every purpose, and these I had to deal with as well as to attend to my military duties as commander of troops. The civil authorities looked to the military for aid and support, and hence my duties brought me in contact with all officers of the civil government, I had a large staff, and among the officers was Realf, whose duty was to receive the visitors to headquarters in an anteroom, Ixi ascertain their names and the nature of their business with the commander, give assistance to them in formu- lating requests, and admit them to the commander in such order and in such numbers as was considered proper; to give information to people who came to make inquiries of various sorts, in such cases as he was able to furnish the requisite information, etc., etc. These duties he discharged with such courtesy, intelligence, and tact, as to render valuable service not only to the commander but to the people, and I found it expedient to retain him in the place until he was mustered out of service. I knew of his literary ability before, but he made it more manifest while he was with me. He wrote several poems of merit during that time, one of which in particular I remember, for he read it to me one morn- ing just after I came in. It was entitled the ' Joy Gun.' Mrs. Miller had seen in a newspaper the account of a negro who appeared at army headquarters in Fort Monroe, I believe, and asked the general in command to fire a joy gun, so that the company of poor, starved people whom this man had brought out of bondage, to within a mile or two of the fort, might hear the gun and know that they were near friends. She cut this out of the paper and giving it to me said, ' This is a fine sub- ject for a poem; give it to Realf and tell him to write.' I did so, and he read the poem to me as above stated. He was very proud of it, and gave me a copy to present to Mrs. Miller. " Realf was a favorite among the officers at Nashville, and was very popular with the people, for he treated all visitors with such urbanity and polite attention as to win their good opinion. He was especially kind to the poor people who came, manifested interest in their suf- ferings, listened to their tales of sorrow, and often came Ixii in and personally stated their cases, and made their appeals as a friend to them with almost poetic eloquence. The rich and powerful who came found him respectful and polite, but not over sympathetic. Realf was the friend of the lowly, the ignorant and poor, and often their advocate. I was greatly pleased with Realf as an aide-de-camp, and believed him a. sincere, earnest, pa- triotic man. He was never with me in battle." With his mustering out of the Union army, there fol- low incidents and life chapters not so attractive, and the following of which is a painful duty indeed to this writer. The marriages of Richard Realf have been much dis- cussed. I use the plural, though legally there was but one marriage. The second ceremony was bigamous in character, and Realf had no knowledge whatever of his being free from the wholesome and honorable relation that he first entered upon. The third relationship entered upon after he had obtained from one State court a divorce from the woman he contracted marriage with at Roches- ter, New York, was, if any validity could attach, of the common-law order. His partner in this third union was the mother of children by him, and everywhere in his latter years he spoke of her as " my wife." His efforts, letters, and speech were burdened by his intense desire to take care of her and the children. These were triplets, all girls, and fortunately these have been adopted and well provided for. The son has grown to manhood and is spoken of as in every way worthy and upright. My Ixiii part just here is to tell the facts as to the real and first marriage. Sophia Emery Graves was a native of Maine, born, I believe, in the neighborhood of Bangor. I have been informed, whether correctly or not I do not know, that there was some relationship through marriage with Hannibal Hamlin, once Senator and Vice-President of the United States. Her people were, however, fairly well-to-do Maine folks, and the young woman herself became a teacher and went west to a sister in Indiana, — Mrs. Furniss, of Furnissville, Porter County, about 40 miles east-by-south of Chicago. My knowledge of this marriage came first from the fact that at Realf's funeral, while the Grand Army escort was passing from Oakland, across the bay to San Francisco, a. strange lady, looking upon the face of the dead, started in sur- prise and remarked to her escort, "Why, that's Captain Realf, whom I saw married." She said no more, and got out of the way, evidently desirous of avoiding public talk. Shortly afterward an article appeared in an Ohio paper denouncing the dead man as having been a biga- mist. I could not trace this to any positive source, though strongly desirous of so doing, in order to learn the actual status of Catherine " Realf," nh Casidy, the Pittsburg woman whose pursuit of Realf to California was the incentive to his suicide. The Reverend Alex- ander Clark, D.D., then Editor of The Protestant Meth- odist Monthly, now deceased, sent me a letter signed " S. Emery.'' The handwriting was fine and original, Ixiv and though it looked feminine, the contents implied that the writer was a man. If so, it must have been an army- comrade of Realf's. I wrote to the address given and received a reply at once, the contents of which was somewhat startling. The writer stated her sex and claimed to be the lawful wife of my friend. " I submit," she wrote from Springfield, Mass., under date of March 8, 1879, "a true statement of my relations to him reluctantly, for I would not add another dark chapter to his already too much blurred life. / was his wife. . . . The 88th Illinois — the regiment in which R. served — was formed in Chicago. The colonel (Chadbourne of Maine, formerly) of this regiment was a connection of mine, and many of the privates were young men or boys, who had been my pupils or neigh- bors in that small Western town where I then lived, and it was through my interest in the welfare of these sol- diers that I became intimate with Realf. We were mar- ried in June, 1865. . . . R. remained with me until August or September, when, having received a commis- sion in a colored regiment stationed ' south,' he pro- ceeded thither, leaving me at the house of my brother- in-law, E. L. Furniss, in northern Indiana. It was intended that I should rejoin him speedily, but it became evident that the troops would soon be mustered out. I awaited his coming north again. His letters were fre- quent and full of plans for our future, of his literary ventures, and of his perils while investigating cases of outrages against the negroes. I received a letter dated Feb. 24, 1866, stating that the troops were to be imme- diately disbanded, and that he should be on his way home before I could have time to answer. That was the last letter I ever received from him, and I never Ixv saw him again. Inquiries were made, but the officers who were with him during the winter only know that they left him at Vicksburg ready, as he told them, to come north or ' home.' " Mrs. S. E. Graves-Realf states that the next time she heard of Realf was in the fall of the same year when Joel Benton published in The Independent a notable letter of the wanderer written to Humphrey Noyes, of the Oneida Community. She continues, in the letter I am quoting from: " After reading these letters I determined that, if do- mestic ties were burdensome to him, he should never be annoyed or troubled by me. He might seek me if he chose, but I should never go to him. I knew that I had made a marriage that could only bring misery in some form or other, and I accepted the penalty without a murmur. After recovering from a. serious illness that followed his desertion, I returned to my relatives in Maine and have lived a quiet, retired life with them ever since. Not many of my relatives or friends, so reticent have I been in regard to my marriage and de- sertion, knew that the Richard Realf of John Brown notoriety was in any way connected with my husband. When his poems or items in regard to him met my eyes I received a shock as if some long-lost friend had been suddenly recalled to mind, but when I saw the account of his untimely end I found I could still feel sorrow for the woes he had heaped upon himself by his reck- less life, and for many weeks newspapers became a tor- ture to me. I can not believe that he was as heedless of all moral or social laws as the reports, if true, prove him." Ixvi She then declares that, as the evidence of his bigam- ous marriage and other connections came to her, she re- adopted her mother's name of Emery and wrote to her friends to thus address her. Referring to the son that Realf left behind as a fruit of his last relationship, Mrs. Realf wrote: " I am interested in that child — where is he, and whom does he call mother?" Later she ex- pressed a wish to adopt the boy, but, after a visit to Mrs. Whapham, concluded to withdraw entirely from all Realf connections — even ceasing any correspondence. In closing this first letter, the great-hearted woman writes anent a proposed biography that the writer should " Touch lightly upon his marital enormities — if men- tioned at all — for the sake of the child and of his aged parents. Had R. realized ' Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,' he would have left a brighter record be- hind him. ... I would not deal harshly with his memory, for ' God and the angels know ' alone what were his temptations, struggles, and atonements during his ill-starred life." The greater part of his letters to Furnissville were destroyed with other papers on Mrs. Realf's recovery from the brain fever which marked her sweet young face and whitened to silver her sunny brown hair. I saw her but once, and she impressed me as both fine and fragile in body and mind. She died some three years ago. It was the desire to prevent renewal of pain to this lady as well as not to burden with reminiscent Ixvii sorrows and hindersome memories another, who was bravely and faithfully struggling out of false conditions — I refer to the mother of the Poet's children — that in great part is due the delay of years in fulfilling the ob- ligation my friend's dying request laid upon me. If I could not help to raise his son by an early publication, 1 could at least hinder noisome discussion, which would have injured him seriously. With the death of the law- ful Mrs. Realf, for whom there can be nothing but the sweetest of sympathy, and the passage of years laboriously occupied in gathering my friend's fugitive poems, and in tracing his erratic wanderings, I felt that the publication of poems and memoir could no longer be delayed. I am assured in conscience and judgment that its effect has on the whole been wise. It remains necessary in completing this painful record to refer to the authenticated certificate of marriage, which document is in the safe of the publishers of this volume. It is not a question of scandal, nor one of pun- ishment for one who made the life of my weak and unhappy friend most miserable, causing him finally to escape by the gate of suicide. That the woman, to escape whom Realf committed suicide, has no legal rights, the following is sufficient proof: "No. Be it known, that on the gth day of June, 1865, the Clerk of the Porter Circuit Court issued a marriage license, of which the following is a true record, to-wit: Ixviii a. < a < X y " State of Indiana, Porter Co., ss: " To any person empowered by Law to solemnize Mar- riages in said County: " You are hereby authorized to join together as Hus- band and Wife, Richard Realf and Sophie E. Graves, according to the laws of the State of Indiana. " In Testimony Whereof, I, E. J. Jones, Clerk of the Circuit Court of said County, hereunto subscribe my name and (L. S.) affix the seal of said Court, at my office in Valpariaso, this gth day of June, a.d., 1865. E. J. Jones, by H. W. Talcott, Deputy." "State of Indiana, Porter Co., ss: "This certifies that I joined in marriage as husband and wife, Richard Realf and Sophie E. Graves, on the loth day of June, 1865. H. H. Morgan, Pastor Cong. Church, Mich. City.'' " Filed and Recorded the 2d day of September, A.D., 1865. E. J. Jones, Clerk." " State of Indiana, Porter County, ss: " I, Rufus P. Wells, Clerk of the Circuit Court in the County of Porter and the State of Indiana, hereby cer- tify that the foregoing is a full, true, and complete copy of the record, marriage license, and certificate of mar- riage of Richard Realf and bophia t. Graves, now ot record in the office of the Clerk of the Porter Circuit Court. "Witness my hand and the seal of said Court, this [L.S.] 7th day of October, A.D., 1879. Rufus P. Wells, Clerk of the Circuit Court." Ixix There is little reason to doubt that on mustering out, March 20, 1866, at Vicksburg, Realf really intended to go direct to Furnissville and the home of his wife. Somewhere and somehow a fantastic impulse led to his abandonment of this purpose, and he went direct to Washington instead. In the many confidences I have had extended to me, and the kindly help that has often been unstintedly given in collecting the stray and widely dispersed poems, etc., of my friend, I have learned of many incidents that are liable to misinterpretation, not necessary to repeat or publish. There was, I doubt not, on Realf's part, an unwarranted fancy for a lady in the Federal City. She was an accomplished, graceful, and intellectual young woman, whom he became slightly acquainted with at a house he boarded in while waiting the fall before for his commission in the colored regi- ment, and there could never have been any warrant on her part for the passionate furore that appears to have possessed him. She had expressed an outspoken admi- ration of his genius as a poet. But Realf went to Washington in place of Indiana, and remained there a short time, when he left for the Cumberland Valley. He then proceeded to New York city. Between June and August there is no trace of his movements, but in the latter part of July he was known to have been taken sick of fever at French's Hotel, for a paragraph to that effect came under my eye at the Federal City. I came to New York soon afterward, for the purpose of finding him, but he had gone elsewhere. I believe John Swinton Ixx found him at the time and comforted him with the glow of his true, warm friendship. The remarlcable corres- pondence Realf had with the head of the Oneida Com- munity belongs to this pe:. iod and is interesting, although the poet never entered that community. The correspondence is too lengthy to reproduce in full, but, as it illustrates the strange processes of my friend's mentality, I give several of the letters, access to which I have had through the kindness of Theodore L. Pitt, Secretary of the Community. Realf's letter to the com- munity, written from Frenrh's Hotel, New York, July 2, 1866. was as follows: " President Perfectionist Association — Sir: I have the honor respectfully to apply for information respecting the nature, character of government, and conditions precedent for membership of the Perfectionist Society. " Not being thoroughly informed upon these matters I trouble you with this communication to state "That, recently at Vicksburg, Miss., I learned from a former comrade in arms of the existence of your soci- ety. That I am 34 years of age, pretty well educated,, that in various grades of private, non-commissioned officer, and officer, I served four years in the volunteer army of the Union, that I have in my possession the official proofs of this, besides the proofs of the recom- mendation of seven general officers, of my appointment to a First Lieutenantcy in the regular army of the United States (from which my refusal to endorse the policy of President Johnson barred me), that I am an occasional contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Monthly and Weekly, that since my muster out of service three months ago, I have resided near Vicksburg, Miss., Ixxi that I came north partly on account of pecuniary losses sustained in consequence of the proscription to which loyal men are subjected, and partly for the purpose, if it were possible, of associating myself with your own or some other communistic society, ' Far off from the clamor of liars, belied in the hubbub of lies. Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.' " I arrived in this city this morning [Realf left Penn- sylvania a month before] and I hasten to address you this brief note, trusting to elicit from your courtesy a reply to the request I have preferred, as well as a state- ment whether and under what circumstances I should be eligible for membership. " I am quite poor, and unaccustomed to manual labor. I am willing, however, to overcome my ignorance, and I should not at all object to pay my board until I learned to make myself useful. If you give me the information sought for, and accord me permission to hold a personal interview, I will bring with me letters and papers cor- roborative of all the statements I have made. Please address me by next mail at French's Hotel. " Most respectfully, " Richard Realf." A friendly response was written to this letter from Oneida, and as Mr. J. H. Noyes, the President and founder of the Oneida Community, was at that time in New York city, it was suggested that Mr. Realf call upon him. On July 24, Realf wrote: "Dear Sir: Acting upon your suggestion I have Ixxii called upon Mr. Noyes, and held a long conversation with him. ... I propose to visit Oneida on Thurs- day, leaving New York on that day. I have read very carefully the pamphlets you were kind enough to send me, and I find the contents of one to be embodied in the ' Berean,' a copy of which I purchased from Mr. Noyes. " I shall not come to Oneida with any purpose of being proselytized, or with any special predisposition towards you. If, as I think, judging from what my friend told me about you, and from what I learn through other sources, your life is the most Christ-like that is being lived — and if I can assimilate myself with you, not in special theoretical views, but on the fundamental basis of the soul — then I shall seek admittance to your community. Nor do I doubt your capacity to judge of the existence of such assimilation, if it shall exist. The eyes of the pure-minded see very clearly. Whoso is God-like, he hath something of the omniscience of God. It is right before I come that I should relate to you, in brief, the history of my life. [He then states the main points of his career without comment.] "But you must not judge that, as Mr. Noyes sug- gested, the adventurous and changeful character of the circumstances of my life indicate desire of change. I asked him to try whether he could not discover a spirit- ual unity of purpose underlying all these things; and I ask you to try and do the same thing. " I shall, of course, be glad to answer any questions which may be asked me, and I have mentioned so much of what is personal to enable you the better to propound them. Briefly, during all my life, I have, as it were, been haunted with a voice as of heaven, compelling me upon the altars of sacrifice and renunciation. Often and often I have tried to stifle it; often and often I have vio- Ixxiii lated its commands — tried to smother it, denied its val- idity, blasphemed its sanctity; but never could I escape it for all that. And because out in the world where people don't see God, for that He is out of physical sight, I can not live after the awful ideals which I can not es- cape; because out in the world the howl of the beast so often drowns out the song of the seraph within me; be- cause the cares of it and the bitternesses of it make and keep me unclean; because, while alien from God and not in at-one-ment I perish in my soul until I am so re- lated; because holding it true ' That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things,' I desire to die to all sin, and to become alive to all right- eousness, and because I am well assured that those whom the Eternal Spirit has awakened from low and material delights to a state of spiritual holiness and in- tuition, constitute, as it were, a divine atmosphere for the reinvigoration of needy souls, therefore I propose to visit your Community, in the belief that if God sees it best for me I shall gravitate toward you, and that if not I shall at least have been strengthened and comforted. " Sincerely, •' Theodore L. Pitt. Richard Realf." On the same day that the above was written. Col. Realf wrote the following letter to Mr. Noyes: " French's Hotel, New York, July 24, 1866. " Dear Sir: My time will be so occupied with business engagements during the remainder of my stay in New York city, that I fear I may not again be able to do myself the pleasure to call upon you. And lest I should not, I desire to thank you very sincerely for your good- Ixxiv ness to me yesterday, and to add one or two words to the matter of our discourse. . . . Under all and running through all the changeful circumstances of my eventful life I have felt and heard — I have not always obeyed — the everlasting imperative, ' Thou shalt work in well-doing,' leaving me hardly any rest by day or by night, because I could not translate it into my conduct in the manner of a visible gospel of truth and love. The world is so very atheistic, the contagion of the world, of its selfishness and its jealousies, its mean pas- sions and meaner aims, is so easy of acquisition, that it has sometimes — quite often — caused me to be worsted by the devil in the encounters which in common with all men I have had to undergo. But nevertheless I could not content myself to live after the outward semblance — I could not rest in the visible comfort — I wanted al- ways to live in accord with the Invisible Truth, and very many times it seems to me that the struggle in my nature between the beast and the seraph, the flesh and the spirit, was greater than I could bear. It seemed sometimes as if ' All his waves had gone over me,' and as if there was nothing left for me to do but to die. "Do you, indeed, doubt the existence of a certain class of souls that can not satisfy their natures with the common modes of life, in whom a hidden principle drives them, so to speak, to seek better and nobler modes of life, in whom the longing after the infinite predominates, and by whom all other ties must be loos- ened and sacrificed, if need be, to the growth and devel- opment of the soul ? Do you, indeed, doubt that there are some in the world who, although alienated from God, would gladly submit to everything of suffering and privation if, thereby, they could be brought into a relationship of oneness with their Heavenly Parent ? Ixxv " But indeed, sir, there are such men and women, who neither by the wealth, nor the praises, nor the pleasures, nor the honors, nor the splendors and power of the world, can be satisfied; men and women who are bankrupt, finding not the peace of God. And are not such people of you and yours, whether with them or not? To die to sin and to live to righteousness, is not that your faith also ? It is not necessary to pronounce any shibboleth to become one of you, is it? If I desire to be at one with Christ, so that His grace and love and purity may run through me like a channel, that is enough, is it not ? And I believe that just in proportion as we are Christ-like we attain His infallibility of in- sight and judgment into the characters of men. I have no fears. Therefore, dear sir, I shall go to Oneida, making my proposed visit, trusting everything to the direction of the Higher Powers which have guided my life hitherto. If I (to use your own term) assimilate with you, I shall remain. If not, still do me the justice to believe that wherever I am and whatever I may do, I shall not cease to labor and pray that ' His will may be done on earth even as it is in Heaven; ' and so I am, " Gratefully your friend, " Richard Realp." The days passed, but Realf did not appear at Oneida. Nothing was heard from him till the middle of August, when he wrote that he had been very ill with typhoid fever, but still expressing his determination of visiting the Community. The poet never went to Oneida, but Secretary Pitt says that, sometime in the following October, he re- ceived a letter, evidently from a woman, signed S. E. Ixxvi Realf. and dated at Furnissville, Ind., making inquiries in regard to Col. Realf. From subsequent brief letters from her, it appears that she had received copies of the poet's letters to the Community. On recovering from his illness. Realf appears to have left New York city, probably intending to go to Oneida, but the army re- cruiting records show that he got no further than Rochester. The private soldier soon began to electrify the literary people of Rochester by the publication of a number of poems, which attracted the attention of men like Ros- siter Johnson, who was then on the staff of the Democrat, of which the writer was the Washington correspondent. Mr. Johnson sought the poet's acquaintance, after hav- ing ascertained his identity with the authorship of con- tributions to magazines which had not escaped his vigi- lant, critical notice, only to find that he was a soldier who had just been ordered from the city. Of Realf's gravest fault and greater misfortune in the illegal mar- riage contracted there, Mr. Johnson knew nothing till years after his death. Catherine Cassidy and Richard Realf were married at the Church of the Trinity, Rochester, early in October, 1867. Realf himself never denied his folly in this matter, though he never ac- knowledged, except to his sister, some ten years later, the illegality of the act. It is not supposable that he believed himself to have then had another and living wife. There has been no direct evidence before me to prove that he even inquired as to the whereabouts, or of Ixxvii the life or death of the lady, but there are many details which circumstantially go to show that somehow he learned of her severe illness from brain fever at Fur- nissville, after his disappearance in the spring of 1866. Her departure from Indiana, and the change made in the spelling of her married, and later of her maiden name, might well have led to the conclusion from fugi- tive researches, that she was not living. In some ex- ceedingly pathetic letters, he afterward wrote, when jealousy made his second companion a raging terror to him, that his Rochester marriage was contracted " dur- ing a prolonged debauch;" and to myself and Col. Sam- uel F. Tappen, his two oldest Kansas friends, he declared that he so acted " in a fit of mental aberration." Realf was mustered out of the army at Fort Columbus, New York, and then became confidential clerk to Gen. Ingalls, Assistant Quartermaster-General, U. S. A. Like others of his always loving friends, I had lost personal trace of him until the accounts of a scandal appeared in the New York newspapers. Realf was charged by James Cassidy, of New York, with having on the 9th of Febru- ary, 1869, stolen from him the sum of $40. On this charge the poet was taken to the Tombs on February 13th, before Police Justice Hogan. He denied the theft, but admitted taking the money, as his own or as due to him from "the father of Catherine." He was dis- charged on his own recognizance, and, though indicted, the matter was never pressed to trial. Mr. W. B. Clarke, a former comrade of Realf's, made a thorough Ixxviii inquiry, and, after sending a copy of the official record, declared that the charge was trumped up, as the result only of a marital quarrel. On the i8th, Realf was discharged, without trial, and after a plea of "not guilty" upon his verbal recognizance. It was just after this unfortunate affair that Realf left for South Car- olina. He was driven in shame to this departure, as he had often been assailed violently in General Ingalls' office. The latter himself told me that these outbreaks often approached insanity. In South Carolina, as else- where, this woe-driven son of genius, made his presence felt at once. His arrival in that State was during the Reconstruction turmoil. The poet won political as well as personal friends at once. Whatever faults may be charged to Richard Realf, that of laziness is not one, for my personal knowledge and continued research prove him to have been ready for Work at every oppor- tunity. He wrote for the Republican State paper and also taught in a colored school at Graniteville. Every- thing was going smoothly till his fate again appeared. Then her violent " colorphobia " compelled him to give up the school. He had made himself felt as a Republi- can speaker. This he did at great risk, and the constant danger of personal violence which surrounded him at this time is shown in a letter, the first direct communi- cation I had received from him for several years — sent to me at Washington, just after he had been appointed Assistant United States Assessor of Internal Revenue at Graniteville. In this letter, dated Graniteville, S. C, Ixxix July 9, 1863, he recounted at length the dangers and difficulties of his position, and urged me as one he be- lieved to be influential with the existing Republican administration, to aid him in getting transferred to some other locality and branch of the public service. I tried to do what my friend wished, but failed through a technical diflSculty — revenue appointments being purely local and not open to transfers. The next thing I heard was that Realf had been publicly derided in his own household, that some revenue money had been misappropriated, but not by him, and generally that his family circumstances were insupportable. Letters giving gross details are in my possession, and such Republican friends as the former chief of the South Carolina State police, who was living in San Francisco when I met him a few years since, have told me that these allegations were correct, the police oflScial having himself made an inquiry. The small defalcation was made good by friends, but Realf could not be induced to return, having gone to Augusta, Georgia. He then left for the North, and the next known of him was by mention in the daily papers of Indianapolis, where his Nemesis had again found him. Scandal at once arose and Realf again dis- appeared. In December, 1869, he was heard of at Pitts- burg, in a destitute condition. The temperance move- ment inaugurated by Francis Murphy was well under way, and Realf at once became one of its most shining converts. He was then befriended by gentlemen whose manly charity soon lifted him into usefulness and posi- Ixxx tion, affording him thereby six years of successful and attractive life — an oasis indeed, amid the bleak and blasted barrens of his desert years. The horrors of the six years preceding, even though he himself had woven the corroding meshes, are almost unendurable even to research, and perfectly unspeakable as to publicity of detail. What must they have been to him who suffered ? At last, however, he stiffened against the fury that pur- sued. Yet when it appeared in Pittsburg, carrying an infant in arms, Realf believing, nay hoping, for a short period, that the babe might be, as was asserted, his own child, seriously designed taking up again his sad life- burden. This is shown by a letter written to a friend, the Rev. Dr. Hanna (now of Washington, D. C), whose church he afterward joined. Becoming convinced, how- ever, that the child had been obtained from an orphan asylum, and that its age forbade his being its father, he refused to care for the alleged mother. On her com- plaint of abandonment, he was arrested and incarcerated in the city jail. Through the efforts of the Reverend David Schindler and some other friends, Realf was soon released, and began again his temperance work. At this time he was the inmate of a Christian Home, and was a constant writer for The Christian. Radical. The child alleged to be his soon died, and Realf steadily de- clined a renewal of marital life. In 1872, when I was in Pittsburg on the occasion of a Union soldiers' and sailors' convention, for which Realf wrote one of his strongest lyrics, entitled "Rally," Ixxxi Mr. Brigham, editor-in-chief of the Pittsburg Commer- cial, the paper on which Realf served for five years as an editorial writer, described to me the way in which he was pursued by his fate. He told me of the inter- est Realf's story, and especially his eloquence, had aroused. He went to hear him one evening, and during the speech a woman created a disturbance. As Mr. Brig- iiam watched Col. Realf, he became impressed with the conviction that a. serious tragedy was impending. He felt that the outraged orator would, if no one inter- vened, soon do some desperate act. Realf once declared to me while in San Francisco that he would kill the woman and himself too if he was again followed. So the kindly-hearted, cool-headed editor secured an intro- duction and asked Realf to call and see him on the next morning. He promised and was on hand to a minute. Mr. Brigham at once asked if Realf wanted work. The editor was embarrassed when Realf looked at him in a dazed fashion, and then burst into tears. The result was his immediate employment at l^^^ eral Lytle, serving as a non-commissioned officer. Both met as such when duty permitted, and became warm friends. During the forward movement which closed for the time in the occupancy of Chattanooga and the great battle of Chickamauga, General Lytle made a speech at Bridgport, Alabama. " Vates " illustrates its effect on Realf , and expresses also the admiration he felt. The MS. of the sonnet was in the General's vest pocket, and was penetrated by the bullet that killed him during the early morning hours of September 20, 1863, when directly in front of the regiment of which Realf was sergeant-major. It was the second day of the Chickamauga fighting. The sonnet and a MS. copy of "My Sword Song," were soaked red with Lytle's blood. Another poem, personal in character, beginning, " Not a faultless seeming face," was addressed to some lady correspondent who sent the soldier her photograph. It was probably Miss May J. Jordan, as 1 received from her the portrait of Realf in fatigue dress which is found in this volume. Mention has been made of an Ode to President Lincoln, written and published at Nashville im- mediately after the assassination, but I have never been able to trace it or to find a copy. " lo Triumphe" was evoked by the surrender at Appomattox, and " Emanci- pation" followed the memorable ist of July, 1863. These poems were published in Harper's and the Atlantic monthlies, or in the Harper's Weekly and the Independent. He does not seem to have directly addressed any poems to his future wife. Miss Graves, except an early version of " Love Makes All Things Musical;" but was in the habit, as she wrote me, of forwarding manuscript copies of all he sent for publication. The period following his mustering out of the 88th Illinois, in June, 1865, and his renewal of service in the colored troops and southern reconstruction duty, up to the date of his leaving Vicksburg as a citizen again, in March, 1866, was fruitful in a number of fine and virile lyrics, most of them, however, touching on dominant topics of the day. During the summer of 1865, " Hash- eesh," — certainly one of his most remarkable poems, one in which he touched the deepest of esoteric mean- ings, — was written. One thinks of Joaquin Miller's reference to Burns, in reading it, as "one who knelt a stranger at his own hearth, seeing all, yet unseen, alone." He began also at this time what was designed to be a long and sustained poem, but a fragment of which has been preserved. Realf's prose is as marked in its rhetorical power and finish as are his poems for their rythm, melody, deep insight, andoftime spiritual grandeur. He was gifted as an orator, and his prose had much of the swing, affluence, and passion of his fervid speech. Yet, as an editorial writer, he became recognized for terse, direct power, epigrammatic capacity and grasp, homely illus- trative faculty, and a sharp, logical grip on facts and statements. His war letters, however, are to me the most attract- ive and valuable of his prose. There remains in my possession material sufficient to make another volume, which would be an effective prose contribution to current American literature. His lectures and orations were almost overpowering in their eloquent tension and gradu- ated power. His voice was an exquisite tenor, deep- ening to a light baritone. It was the organ of an orator, the timbre fine, and the tones musical and well modu- lated. Richard Realf looked like the traditional poet — even to the day of his death. His handsome head, face, and body were a fit receptacle for his handsome soul and brilliant mind. Short of stature, being not over five feet five in height, he was very boyish looking when I first met him in November, 1855. Time dims memories; yet, though forty-three years have passed, I still remem- ber the figure that passed into my life as that of a beau- tiful Greek, an Apollo that Phidias would have chiseled into immortal marble. The young form was slight and graceful, though not weak, hands and feet small and perfectly formed. The rounded, perfectly shaped head, sat well on a fitly proportioned neck. I recall the ensemble: brown, wavy, and plentiful hair, a slight, silky moustache, a broad, white forehead, perfectly shaped face and features. His eyes were a fine hazel, deepening to a dark brown, or lightening to a keen gray, his nose well-shaped, broad at the root ; finely penciled, arched eyebrows and a rounded, sensuous chin completed the handsome face of Richard Realf. What thing more remains to be said of Richard Realf. l- < o % u Q O O tu > < ai. O J < H o H H O z 2 o o .J o" o en u •A < a. < ■A O S o Intellectually and spiritually, judging of him as a true poet, whatsoever had been the failures of his objective life, he remained true to his finest moods and subject- ive ideals. His own measure of himself, as the Poet, may, perhaps, be found in the following sonnet, written early in his Pittsburg days, and entitled by him THE SINGER. O high, impalpable spirit of Song which dost Yield only, evermore, most palpable pain. It is so hard and bitter that 1 must To all thy silent scantities attain. And not thy sweet serenities; so hard To wear thy keen revealing crowns, which prick Till the brows quiver, and to be debarred Thy kisses, which thrill also to the quick. Cleansing our lips for singing. But I am Even in dumb paths renunciative content: Content beneath thy solemn oriflamme. Albeit thou treadest not the hard ascent With me, since only from such dimmest height Can man conjecture of God's Infinite! POEMS SONNETS SYMBOUSMS ALL round us lie the awful sacrednesses Of babes and cradles, graves and hoary hairs; Of girlish laughters and of manly cares; Of moaning sighs and passionate caresses; Of infinite ascensions of the soul, And wild hyena-hungers of the flesh; Of cottage virtues and the solemn roll Of populous cities' thunder, and the fresh, Warm faith of childhood, sweet as mignonette Amid Doubt's bitter herbage, and the dear Re-glimpses of the early stars which set Down the blue skies of our lost hemisphere. And all the consecrations and delights Woven in the texture of the days and nights. The daily miracle of Life goes on Within our chambers, at the household hearths, In sober duties and in jocund mirths; In all the unquiet hopes and fears that run Out of our hearts along the edges of 3 Symbolisms The terrible abysses; in the calms Of friendship, in the ecstacies of love; In burial-dirges and in marriage-psalms; In all the far weird voices that we hear; In all the mystic visions we behold; In our souls' summers when the days are clear; And in our winters when the nights are cold, And in the subtle secrets of our breath, And that Annunciation men call death. O Earth ! thou hast not any wind that blows Which is not music: every weed of thine Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine; And every humble hedgerow flower that grows. And every little brown bird that doth sing. Hath something greater than itself, and bears A living Word to every living thing. Albeit it hold the Message unawares. All shapes and sounds have something which is not Of them: a Spirit broods amid the grass; Vague outlines of the Everlasting Thought Lie in the melting shadows as they pass; The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills The fringes of the sunsets and the hills. For ever, through the world's material forms, Heaven shoots its immaterial; night and day Symbolisms Apocalyptic intimations stray Across the rifts of matter; viewless arms Lean lovingly toward us from the air; There is a breathing marvel in the sea; The sapphire foreheads of the mountains wear A light within light which ensymbols the Unutterable Beauty and Perfection That, with immeasurable strivings, strives Through bodied form and sensuous indirection To hint into our dull and hardened lives (Poor lives, that can not see nor hear aright!) The bodiless glories which are out of sight. Sometimes (we know not how, nor why, nor whence) The twitter of the swallows' neath the eaves. The shimmer of the light among the leaves, Will strike up through the thick roofs of our sense. And show us things which seers and sages saw In the gray earth's green dawn: something doth stir Like organ-hymns within us, and doth awe Our pulses into listening, and confer Burdens of Being on us; and we ache With weights of Revelation, and our ears Hear voices from the Infinite that take The hushed soul captive, and the saddening years Seem built on pillared joys, and overhead Vast dove-like wings that arch the world are spread. Insufficiency He, by such raptnesses and intuitions. Doth pledge his utmost immortality Unto our mortal insufficiency. Fettered in grossness, that these sensual prisons, Against whose bars we beat so tired wings, Avail not to ward off the clear access Of His high heralds and interpretings; Wherefore, albeit we may not fully guess The meaning of the wonder, let us keep Clean channels for the instincts which respond To the Unutterable Sanctities that sweep Down the far reaches of the strange Beyond, Whose mystery strikes the spirit into fever. And haunts, and hurts, and blesses us for ever. INSUFFICIENCY OTHAT some Poet, with awed lips on fire Of the Ineflfable Altars, would arise. And with his consecrated songs baptize Our souls in harmony, that we might acquire Insight into the essential heart of Life, Beating with rythmic pulses. There is lost. In the gross echoes of our brawling strife, Insufficiency Music more rare than that which did accost Shakspeare's Imagination, when it swept Nearest the Infinite. Our spirits are All out of tune; our discords intercept The strains which, like the singing of a star. Stream downward from the Holies, to attest. Beyond our jarring restlessnesses. Rest. I think our ideal aims will still elude Our eager wishes — that we still shall miss The elemental blessedness which is Incorporate somewhere in our humanhood — That still the unsolved riddles of the Sphinx Will vex us with an inward agony — That still within our daily meats and drinks Will lurk an unknown poison, until we Learn more of reverence for the Soul of Man! O friends, I fear we do but desecrate The sanctity of Being — do but fan The cruel fires of slowly-dying Hate, Instead of kindling hero-lives to dare Greatly for Man's hope against Man's despair. Our plummets are too short to fathom well The deep things of existence. Unto pride Insufficiency And unto bitterness it is denied To know the sacred temples wherein dwell The oracles and angels. We want first, For the interpretation of the land, Love, whereby Faith, the seer of Truth, is nursed; And Sympathy, by which to understand The faces of our fellows. What we need Is dew on our dry natures — sustenance For the starved spirit — not the outward greed. We lean too much on palpable circumstance, Too little on impalpable souls, to attain God's morrows for our yesterdays of pain. IV. We want more depth, more sweetness, less reliance On visible forms and ceremonial laws ; Less venomous jeering, at the ingrained flaws Which mar our brother's beauty; less defiance. Less clannish spite, less airy sciolism. Less incense burned at worldly altars, less Chuckling, less supercilious criticism; More warmth, more meekness, and true lowliness. More human moisture in our lives, more smell Of flowers about our gardens, better sense That something worthy and acceptable May lie beyond the walls with which we fence Our isolation round; excluding thus The high ones who would fain have speech of us. Insufficiency It is not by repressions and restraints Men are withheld from imminent damnation, But by the spiritual aflSliation Of love with love. Our vehemence acquaints Heaven with our weakness, chiefly. O, we must Lower our proud voices, front less haughtily The inexorable years; learn ampler trust In God's child, Man, with God's eternity Standing behind him, before we may quell Our riotous devils strongly, or drown out The conflagrations which are lit of hell; Or, panoplied in wisdom, put to rout The insurrectionary ranks of lies Which hang like murder on our best emprise. Lo, this is Christdom! This same blessed earth, From its clear coronals of the air we breathe, Down to the primal granite underneath Its mountains, hath had very notable birth Out of Judaic insufiSciency. But what are we but unbelieving men, Who put not Christ in our philosophy. And only call our brothers bretheren On Sabbaths merely ? Tooth for tooth is good. Insufl&ciency We think on week-days — the old rigor that With literal eye for eye and blood for blood. Through all the centuries striveth to tread flat The immemorial hill from which alone We dare lift steady eyes to the unknown. What shall we say then ? — That our brother's crimes Augur our own diseases ; that his hurts Imply our shames; that the same bond engirts Alike the man who lapses and who climbs; That formulas and credos, when divorced From the great spirit of all-pervading ruth. Leave still the lean and thirsty world athirst For the deep heart and blessedness of truth; — That in the noblest there is something base And in the meanest noble; that behind The sensual darkness of the human face Not to be quenched by any adverse wind, Enough of God's light flickers for a sign That our best possible is His divine. Here's room for poets! Here is ground for seers! — Broad leagues of acres waiting for the seed Whose recompensing sheaves of song shall breed. Within the bosom of the garnering years, Harvests of prodigal plenty. O ye lips. My Slain Anointed for the proper utterance Of what things lie in worthy fellowships! O eyes to which the dread significance Of life's grand mystery is visible! For lack of ye the poor earth perishes — The patient earth, so very beautiful; The comely earth, so clung with noble stress; Aching for God unutterably, and wet With most immortal tears and bloody sweat. MY SI.AIN THIS sweet child which hath climbed upon my knee, This amber-haired, four-summered little maid, With her unconscious beauty troubleth me, With her low prattle maketh me afraid. Ah, darling! when you cling and nestle so. You hurt me, tho you do not see me cry. Nor hear the weariness with which I sigh For the dear babe I killed so long ago. I tremble at the touch of your caress; I am not worthy of your innocent faith, I who, with whetted knives of worldliness Did put my own child-heartedness to death — Beside whose grave I pace forever more. Like desolation on a ship-wrecked shore. My Slain There is no little child within me now, To sing back to the thrushes, to leap up When June winds kiss me, when an apple bough Laughs into blossom, or a buttercup Plays with the sunshine, or a violet Dances in the glad dew — alas ! alas ! The meaning of the daisies in the grass I have forgotten; and if my cheeks are wet, It is not with the blitheness of a child. But with the bitter sorrow of sad years. O moaning life with life irreconciled! O backward-looking thought! O pain! O tears! For us there is not any silver sound Of rhythmic wonder springing from the ground. Woe worth the knowledge and the bookish lore Which makes men mummies; weighs out every grain Of that which was miraculous before. And sneers the heart down with the scoffing brain. Woe worth the peering, analytic days That dry the tender juices in the breast. And put the thunders of the Lord to test So that no marvel must be, and no praise, Nor any God except Necessity. What can you give my poor starved life in lieu Of this dead cherub which I slew for ye? Take back your doubtful wisdom, and renew My early foolish freshness of the dunce. Whose simple instinct guessed the heavens at once, 12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— 1863 IT touches to the quick the spirit of one Who knows what FreedoDfi is; whose eyes have seen The crops thou sowest ripen in the sun; Whose feet have trod the fields wherein men glean The harvests of thy lonely hours, when thou Didst grapple with the Incarnate Insolence Lording the Land with impious pretense, And very bravely on its arrogant brow Didst set thy sealed abhorrence — when he hears The glib invectives which men launch at thee, Beloved of Peoples, crowned in all thy years Nestor of all our chiefs of Liberty, As if thou wert some devil of crafty spell Let loose to lure the unwary unto hell. II. But thou art wiser; thy clear spiritual sense Threading our tangled darkness, seest how The equilibriums of Omnipotence Poise the big worlds in safety. Disavow And jeer thee as men will, stab, howl, and curse, They can not blur the glory of thy fame. Nor pluck the noble memories of thy name 13 Abraham lyincoln — 1863 From the glad keeping of the Universe, Quickened with the conjunction of thy Spirit. For lo ! thou art Our's alone — and yet thou art Nature's, Mankind's, the Age's! We inherit Joint treasures from thee; but we stand apart From all the earth in bitter trespasses ■ Gainst thee and thy great throb of tenderness. Nathless, let not our cold ingratitude Make sad the soul within thee: in the years When the full meanings of our brotherhood Roll their high revelations round the spheres. The solemn passion of thy life shall be A wonder and a worship unto all. Whose eyes behold the Apocalyptical Transfiguration of Humanity. Meanwhile, because thy recompense is pain. Weary not thou; invisible lips shall kiss The trouble from thy heart and from thy brain. In all the days of thy self-sacrifice. Thy blessed hurts being still thy amplest wage. Thou Archimedes of Love's leverage. 14 TO A I^ADY AFFI^ICTED WITH DEAF- NESS WHY what a sweet and sacred recompense, Dear friend, doth reinforce thy meagre loss! Because, allbeit upon thy outward sense Fainter than naked feet on woodland moss. The blessed sounds of the blessed world do fall, The fine ear of the soul is so intense With its quick nerve, thou apprehendest all The multitudinous voices which arise From the singing earth unto the seeing stars — Its low sad minors, its triumphant cries. The lusty shouting of its conquerors. The slaves' hushed wail, the tender mother's sighs: Through all, thy listening spiritual instincts hark God luring his poor children from the dark. IN PERIL BECAUSE of the bleak anguish of her cry. When our two natures tore themselves apart, Like a hell-horror crashing through my heart. Wiping God's stars from out his purple sky, I think I can the better testify 15 In Peril Unto the terrible smiting stroke which clave Thro' the fine fibers of your delicate brain. When, with your lashes trickling drops of rain. For the last time your shivering lips you gave To his, for kisses and for comfortings. O deep, deep woman heart! O coiling pain Of blackened silence, leaden as the grave; O weary stricken dove, O drooping wings, Christ hold thee in thy dark of shudderings. Be strong — be strong! I think that He who held His Son's soul in his Soul's Gethsemane, Who smote the royal first-born, and compelled The maddened waters of the moaning sea To crouch in awe at his prophetic knee. And harnessed his own fiery cloud of stars. To march before his chosen humanity — I say I think the sweep of scimetars He will ward off from him who loveth thee. O many limbs must yawn with ghastly scars Before a godless hand may ever touch This Moses of an Israel that is free. Therefore — O trembler! grieve not overmuch For him who yet shall clasp thee tenderly. i6 LOVE'S MARVEL 1 THINK that Love makes all things musical, As, melted in the marvels of its breaths, Our barren lives to blossoming lyrics swell. And the new births shine upward from old deaths. Witching the world with wonder. Thus to-day Watching the crowding people in the street, I thought the ebbing and the flowing feet Moved to a delicate sense of rhythm alway. And that I heard the yearning faces say, ' ' Soul, sing me this new song ! " The Autumn leaves Throbbed subtly to me an immortal tune; And when a warm shower wet the roofs at noon. Low melodies seemed to slide down from the eaves. Dying delicious in a dreamy swoon. VIOLA'S SONG Do you remember how, a day ago. You broke into a mellow Tuscan hymn ? And how your spirit's passionate overflow, In waves of living jubilance did grow And greaten all around you, till the dim And shadowy parlor trembled to and fro With shining splendors, as though the cherubim 17 Decoration Day Waved their white wings above it? O, dear tones Of that rare singing! O, the subtle voice Which shook me to the marrow of my bones, And clenched and held me till I had no choice Save in bowed reverence to follow it Along its starry pathway — thrilled and lit With radiance of far incandescent thrones. DECORATION DAY THANK God for Liberty's dear slain; they give Perpetual consecration unto it, Quick'ning the clay of our insensitive Dull natures with the awe of infinite. Sun-crowned transfiguration, such as fit On the solemn-brooding mountains. O, the dead. How they do shame the living; how they warn Our little lives that huckster for the bread Of peace, and tremble at the world's poor scorn. To pick their steps among the flowers, and tread Daintily soft where the raised idols are, Prone with gross dalliance where the feasts are spread. When most they should strive forth, and flash afar Light, like the streaming of heroic war. i8 PATIENCK THE swift years bring but slow development Of the worlds majestic; for Freedom is Born grandly orb'd, as a solid continent, Layer upon layer, from chaos and the abyss, Shoulders its awful granite to the light. Building the eternal mountains, on whose crests. Pinnacled in the intense sapphire, rests The brooding calmness of the Infinite. But we, whirled round and round in heated gusts Of eager indignation, think to weigh Against God's patience our gross griefs and lusts Like foolish Jonah before Nineveh (O world-wide symbol of his vanished gourd!) Expostulating gravely with the Lord. PASSION 1 CLENCH my arms about your neck, until The knuckles of my hands grow white with pain, And my swollen muscles quiver with the strain, And all the pulses of my life stand still. I say I clench so. Ah! you can not tear Yourself away from my immortal grip Of forlorn tenderness and salt despair, 19 Silence Still And child-like sorrowing after fellowship, And wolf-like hunger of the famishing heart; For not until my sundering fibers crack, And my torn limbs from their wrenched sockets start, O darling, darling! will I yield me back To that lone hell whence, shuddering through and through, With one wild tiger-leap I sprang to you. SILENCE STILI. BUT do not heed my trembling; do not shrink Because my face is haggard, and my eyes Blaze hot with thirstiness as they would drink Your wells up to their ultimate supplies. 1 will not hurt you, darling! I will be More tender than our Mothers were to us In our first days of helpless infancy. — And if I kiss you thus, and thus, and thus; And fling toward you — so — and make you wreathe Nigher and nigher, until you can not breathe Save by my sufferance, — I will not wet Your dead white forehead with a single staio (I will watch so) from all the purple rain Of my great agony and bloody sweat. 20 A YEAR AGO A YEAR ago two thin and delicate hands Trembled within my passionate parting clasp, Two dreamy eyes seemed spiritual overmuch, And one white brow my hot lips loved to touch, Burned as if belted by the securing bonds That crown our crowns of sorrow. Then she spoke: " God keep you " — but a sudden shivering gasp Splintered the rest to silence with one stroke. O, t'was well feigned! the exquisite, audible sign. The mute beseeching of the bloodless lips The paleness reaching to the finger tips. And the deep, mournful splendor of the eye. God! but her rare skill smote me as a cry Of those who perish amid sinking ships. Now, let this pass! O, woman, there shall come In the deep midnights, when thy pulses throb, And something startles thee like a low sob, A shining grandeur that shall strike thee dumb — The glory of a great white martyrdom! And nothing save the old clock on the wall. Whose strokes shall crash like awful thunder then. Shall answer thee when thou shalt wildly call David Swing On the strange past to speak to thee again With one voice more! but thou shalt grope and crawl Along wet burial crypts, and thy large tears, Scorched with the heat of thy strong agony. Shall blister on the dead hopes of old years. Who shall rise up to glare and mock at thee. DAVID SWING FOR souls like thine, coined of creative fire. Electric with quick instincts — it is hard To endure the fool, the Pharisee, the liar. The scoffs and jeers of little lives on guard Against the lifting Savior; terrible To tread most sovran indignation down With still more sovran pity — to annul The wrong as though it were not, and to crown Man-hating with Christ-loving; bitter as death To keep calm lips closed over burning breath. And make the clenched fist reverence the will That holds the tingling fibers in restraint. Yet only through such pain may we fulfil The measure of the hero and the saint. Truth's self is Truth's own triumph and success. Therefore wait thou: Whoso hath eyes to see David Swing The marvel of his everlastingness. Rooted in God's immutability; He whose true soul is reverent and wise To read the lesson of the Universe, That not in crowd nor ritualities, Nor the proud pomps with which men bless and curse. Lie liberty and mastery, but alone In that ineffable Christ whom we disown, Needeth no human succor — for he is Girt all about with the Invisible. Wherefore, albeit thine enemies howl and hiss, Remain thou silent, till thine hour is full. Until thine hour is full. For there shall come A moment when, with clarified, soft eyes. Men shall behold thy stature, and stand dumb. Stricken with large and beautiful surprise. But this is not thy glory; the broad gaze Of seeing natures, the sweet sobs and shouts Of glad, freed thralls who in new-throbbing praise Do penance for the evil of old doubts — The home in good men's hearts, the wider faith, The benedictions poured along thy path. The prayers that run like couriers at thy side. The dear beliefs of childhood's innocence — These are as naught: that thou hast justified Thy soul with love, is thy soul's recompense. 23 IN A SCRAP BOOK HERE, gathered from all places and all time, The waifs of wisdom and of folly meet. High thoughts that awe and lilting words that chime Like Sabbath bells heard in far vallies sweet; Quaint fancies, musical with dainty rhyme Like the soft patter of an infant's feet; And laughter radiant as summer skies. The genial sunshine of the happy heart; And giant hopes looking out from human eyes, With thrilling hymns that make the quick tears start. Are here, in garlands of strange fantasy, To catch the careless passer's casual look. And show, within the limits of a book. Unto him his life's own large epitome. TO FRANK B. CARPENTER, Artist, After seeing his portrait of Henry Ward Beecher IT was thy soul's deep reverence earned thee this. And not thy painter's cunning, — the true eye, Bathed in the light of shining prophecy. To understand the spiritual influences Wherefrom do spring the wonderful mysteries 24 To an English Friend Of the high speech of features! Else, whence came The silent subtle aroma that grows Like the utter sweetness of a perfect rose To the hearts of the beholders, and the flame Clasping his brows with the old tenderness, So that once more we part our lips to bless The yearning face we look on, and pass forth Watching the glorious bountiful sun caress The people swarming on the rugged earth. TO AN ENGIvISH FRIEND STAND still, and let me read thee as thou art! O, like a spiritual hearted child, who stands Watching a dying sunset by the sea. When blazing awe hath stricken his lips apart. And crept, like thunder, through the clenched hands With which he clutched at that God's prophecy. And missed it: so stands shivering on the sands. Staring his reddened eyes into the night. Straining his splintered heartstrings till he dies — So does the hunger of his famishing eyes Glare toward the line of overwhelming light That stunned thee into speechlessness; and yet It stands and waits in the eternities. To clasp thee sudden when thy cheeks are wet. 25 TO MRS. M , OF ENGI^AND On the birth of her first child WHEN you lay shivering with the great excess Of mother-marvel at your child's first cry; When you looked up and saw him standing by, Leaning the strong unspeakable utterness Of all his soul upon you; when you smiled, And your weak lips strove mightily to frame To a new song your new life's oriflamme. And presently the infinite words, " Our child," Made a most musical murmur, as of breath Breathed by a poet's spirit — did you know The babe's slight moan, that seemed so faint and low, Was God's voice speaking from dear Nazareth, Covering you up with that white light that lay On Mary and her young Christ in the hay ? TO A IvADY ON CHIDING ME FOR NOT WRITING IF still I hold my peace, and stand aloof From giving thee tongue-worship, it is not Because my nature hath grown passion proof: In truth I think my heart's blood is as hot 26 To a Ivady on Chiding me for not Writing As when, foreseeing my spirit would else rot, Heaven purged me with hell's sulphur; only now. Leaning here, with my sword drawn, on my shield. Ribbed with the strokes of battle's deadliest hate, I have no leisure to unbend my brow Into the mood of sonnets! Ay, and thou — Though the deep song be nevermore revealed, And thine own anthem perish uncreate — Wilt deem me manlier that I do not yield The stern hour unto music: therefore, wait! Wait! it is better so. Some day, perhaps. The Word within may find an utterance. Only not now while God's great thunder-claps And still small voices of vast covenants Are talking with my soul. I must be dumb When Heaven speaks, and my hungry eyes do glance Into the deeps of Being, tho' my heart Break with its bursting silence. — O, dear friend, I surely trust the Pentecost will come, When these mute yearnings of my life shall start Into a living lyric, that shall blend Music with all my pulses, and ascend Calmly and purely the celestial hope — A belt of fire across my horoscope. 27 THE TRUTH THE great world grows in glory; near and far God's blinding splendors blaze upon our eyes; And thunders, as of newer Sinais, Crash triple grandeurs of deep prophecies; And large loves, white as Christ's own Angels are. Fling shining sweetnesses on all the spheres; And calm vast hymns, high as the morning star. Throb throneward from the green isles of the seas. Yea, all the days are as a Mother's tears — Brimfull with unsaid meanings. Therefore now I will stretch forth my yearning hands to seize The luminous Truth, which, girdled on my brow. Shall fringe my soul with flaming sanctities. The early promise of an ancient vow. TO MISS H B- IHAVE been homeless such a weary while; Have lived so long upon Love's scattered crumbs, Strewn in the outer alleys of the world; My naked heart has been so dashed and whirled From side to side in bitter martyrdoms. Made all the bitterer by the lean, sad smile 28 To Miss H B- Shivering upon my lips, that this new feast Whereto I am bidden as chief banqueter, And whereat, though my speech be of the least, I may bend on her my great, greedy eyes, Walk by her side, a reverent listener — Silent, 'till all my own soul's silences Burst into blossoming music: 'tis too deep. Too very blessed! Heart — be still and weep. I held her name between me and the sun And then I staggered downward to my knees; O, blessed Christ! how my brain reeled and spun When, like a flash from the Eternities, The blinding blaze of burning glory clung Around the luminous letters, till the name Shot outward into breathing life, a flame With Godlike splendor, as a cloven tongue Of awful Pentecost! O Holiest Of all the holy! O, great Infinite Who thro' all works still workest all things best; I yield this name unto thee; pure and white Keep it, dear Father! Keep it in Thy sight — Keep it for me when my soul can not rest. 29 IN NOTRE DAME THEY look down from their places on the wall With such transfigurings in their steadfast eyes. You see a sweet ascending glory rise About their foreheads apostolical, And hear such wondrous spiritual replies From those meek lips of patient sorrow fall. You kneel down in the light that glorifies The aisles of silent worshipers, and thrill Beneath the anointed, soothing hand that lies On the moaning surge of your dark agonies Born of the lapses of the heart and will From G^d's high levels to man's low tracts of ill; And pass forth quivering with the soft surprise That touched you in the whisper, " Peace, be still." TO THADDEUS HYATT WHEN God spake unto Moses, and the crags Of Sinai shook with thunder, do you think The gaping Jews upon the river brink. Stripping the tinsel from their priestly rags To build them yellow idols, ever caught 30 Nannie's Picture ' Mid the loud tumult of their mummeries, The slightest whisper of the Eternal Thought? So, do you think that those who fret and fume, Tossed round and round in a great whirl of lies Can catch the meaning lying in your eyes. Or mark the colors of the mystic bloom Whose silent growth is as a rose of fire; Or through the rifts of dark, and mist, and gloom. See Godlike Love beneath your manly ire? NANNIE'S PICTURE CHILD-INSTINCT of the Holy mingles here, With the fine painter-cunning: heart and eye All steeped in seeing of the mystic sky Which broods above the enchanted wondersphere The little children walk in. Else, whence came The aromatic effluence that grows. Dear as first fragrance of a dawning rose. Out from the canvas — and the subtle flame Wreathing the dainty baby-brows with light Clothed with revealings of the Infinite — Making us part revering lips to bless The winsome face we look on, and pass forth. Watching the beatific Sun caress The people swarming on the happy earth? 31 " VATES." [Written to General I/ytle, author of the poem, "Antony to Cleopatra," ("I am dying, Egypt, dying"), who was killed at Cbickamauga, the bullet passing through the original manuscript of this sonnet. Orderly Sergeant Realf served in I,ytle's Brigade, and the two poets were friends.] VATES," I shouted, while your solemn words Rythmic with crowded passion, lilted past; " That Land which, thrilled with anguish, still affords Great souls all coined in one grand battle blast, Like this soul and this singing, shall not fail So much as by a hair's-breadth, of the large Results of affluent wisdom, whereunto Across the bloody gaps our blades must hold. And far beyond the mountain and the maze We pass with bruis6d limbs that yet shall scale The topmost heights of Being! Therefore, thou Lead on, that we may follow, for I think The Future hath not wherefrom we should shrink. Held by the steadfast shining of your brow! " TO R. J. H. 1 MARKED fine crownings of a Crowning Hand Flush on his brooding brows: and, catching so The inward radiance through the outward glow, I know that very tranquil, deep and grand. Waited a power within him to withstand All luring shows of things that were not based 32 Written on the Night of His Suicide. On firmamental pillars. Then I said I thank God reverently that amid this Loud whirl of eager faction He hath placed A far-eyed seSr, calm-poised of heart and head — A lithe-thewed Titan with winged faiths that kiss The crests of difficult peaks, and tread the paths Where the clear-sighted walk by the abyss Close to diviner loves and holier wraths. WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF HIS SUICIDE J~\E mortuis nil nisi bonum." When "^^^ For me this end has come and I am dead, And the little voluble, chattering daws of men Peck at me curiously, let it then be said By some one brave enough to speak the truth: Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong. Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth To his bleak, desolate noon, with sword and song, And speech that rushed up hotly from the heart. He wrought for liberty, till his own wound (He had been stabbed), concealed with painful art Through wasting years, mastered him, and he swooned, And sank there where you see him lying now With the word " Failure " written on his brow. 33 Written on the Night of His Suicide. But say that he succeeded. If he missed World's honors, and world's plaudits, and the wage Of the world's deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed Daily by those high angels who assuage The thirstings of the poets — for he was Born unto singing — and a burthen lay Mightily on him, and he moaned because He could not rightly utter to the day What God taught in the night. Sometimes, nathless, Power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame. And blessings reached him from poor souls in stress; And benedictions from black pits of shame, And little children's love, and old men's prayers, And a Great Hand that led him unawares. So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred With big films — silence ! he is in his grave. Greatly he suffered; greatly, too, he erred; Yet broke his heart in trying to be brave. Nor did he wait till Freedom had become The popular shibboleth of courtier's lips; He smote for her when God Himself seemed dumb And all His arching skies were in eclipse. He was a-weary, but he fought his fight. And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed To see the august broadening of the light And new earths heaving heavenward from the void. He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet — Plant daisies at his head and at his feet. 34 WAR AND RELATED LYRICS APOCALYPSE Private Arthur I