Songs, Merry and Sad Part 10

The true stars came to their stations in heaven, The false stars s.h.i.+vered deep down in the sea, And the white crests went like monsters, driven By winds that never would let them be,

And there, where the elements mingled and muttered, We stood, each man with a lone dumb heart, Full of the vastness that never was uttered By symbol of words or by echo of art.

L'envoi

G.o.d willed, who never needed speech, "Let all things be:"

And, lo, the starry firmament And land and sea And his first thought of life that lives In you and me.

His circle of eternity We see in part; Our spirits are his breath, our hearts Beat from his heart; Hence we have played as little G.o.ds And called it art.

Lacking his power, we shared his dream Of perfect things; Between the tents of hope and sweet Rememberings Have sat in ashes, but our souls Went forth on wings.

Where life fell short of some desire In you and me, Feeling for beauty which our eyes Could never see, Behold, from out the void we willed That it should be,

And sometimes dreamed our lisping songs Of humanhood Might voice his silent harmony Of waste and wood, And he, beholding his and ours, Might find it good.

[End of original text.]

Notes:

John Charles McNeill was born in Scotland County, near Laurinburg, North Carolina, on 26 July 1874, and died on 17 October 1907 (when he was 33 years old). He only produced this one volume before he died, though he planned a second, which was published posthumously. "Songs, Merry and Sad", first published in Charlotte in 1906, went through at least five printings over more than 60 years. (This text is taken from the very first edition.)

Both of McNeill's grandfathers came from Scotland.

McNeill attended Wake Forest College, where he received both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees. In 1899-1900 he taught English at Mercer University.

Some of his poems were published nationally as early as 1901. More of his poems were published by 'The Charlotte Observer' starting in 1903, and in 1904 he joined its staff.

This etext was created by entering the text (manually) twice, once from the first printing (1906) and once from the second printing (no date), and comparing the two. There were some slight differences in the two printings.

A portrait of John Charles McNeill faces the t.i.tle page (p. 3) in the second printing, but is absent in the first.

The first printing gives the publisher as Stone & Barringer Co. and gives the date as 1906. The second printing gives the publisher as Stone Publis.h.i.+ng Co., and gives no date. Both were printed in Charlotte, N.C.

One error was corrected (the second printing also corrected this error):

(p. 73) [ A holy presence hovers round here there, ]

changed to: [ A holy presence hovers round her there, ]

The second printing also changed the t.i.tle of the poem [ To Melvin Gardner: Suicide ], on p. 19, to [ To Melvin Gardner: ]--in the text, but not in the table of Contents. This may have been done in deference to the family--att.i.tudes on suicide were once quite different than now--but as it has been quite some time, and the original t.i.tle gives more meaning to the poem, it has been retained.

The t.i.tle of the poem [ Now! ] did not have the exclamation point in the table of Contents. It has been added to match the text. The t.i.tle of the poem [ "97": The Fast Mail ] appeared as such in the text, but as ["97:" The Fast Mail ] in the Contents. The latter was changed to match the text.

In the original, the book's t.i.tle does not separate the Contents from the first poem. It has been placed there as a sort of divider.

In two places ASCII fails to provide enough characters for a correct rendering. They are the words Provencal (the c with a cedilla) and mailed (the e with an acute accent, to indicate that the word is to be said with two syllables). These occur in "Reminiscence" and "The Rattlesnake".