No More Learning

"This chestnut-tree (at Cedarcroft, the estate of Mr. Bayard Taylor,
in Pennsylvania), is estimated to be more than eight hundred years old. "
-- Sidney Lanier, 1877.

Hard by stood its mate, apparently somewhat younger.
It is related in a letter of 1882, from Mrs. Taylor, that in 1880,
a year after Mr. Taylor's death, one of these majestic trees
gave the first signs of decay: while his comrade lingered two years longer --
to follow as closely the footsteps of Mr. Lanier: the two,
faithful-hearted "to their master and to him who sang of them. "


A Florida Ghost.

The incidents recorded of this storm are matter of history
in and around Tampa.


"Nine from Eight".

The local expression "under the hack" is kindly explained
by an authority in middle Georgia dialect, Richard Malcolm Johnston,
author of `The Dukesborough Tales' and other Georgia stories. He says:

"`Under the hack' is a well-known phrase among the country-people,
and is applied, generally in a humorous sense, to those who have been cowed
by any accident. A man who is overruled by his wife,
I have often heard described as `under the hack': `She's got him
under the hack. ' So, when a man has lost spirit from any cause,
he is said to be `under the hack'.
The phrase is possibly derived
from `hackle', an instrument used in the breaking of flax. "


"Thar's more in the Man than thar is in the Land".

"Jones" designates Jones County, Ga. , one of the counties
adjoining Bibb County, in which Macon is located.


The Jacquerie. A Fragment.

Although `The Jacquerie' remained a fragment for thirteen years
Mr. Lanier's interest in the subject never abated. Far on in this interval
he is found planning for leisure to work out in romance
the story of that savage insurrection of the French peasantry,
which the Chronicles of Froissart had impressed upon his boyish imagination.


To ----.

The era of verse-writing with Mr. Lanier reopens in this dream
of the Virginia bay where poet's reveries and war's awakenings
continually alternated.

He presents it for a friend's criticism -- at the age of twenty-one --
in these words: "I send you a little poem which sang itself through me
the other day. 'Tis the first I've written in many years. "


Night.

This poem was not published by the writer and the simile of the second verse
was appropriated to `An Evening Song'.