Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/540

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SOUTHERN LIFE IN SOUTHERN LITERATURE


QUESTIONS, i. How have the marshes called to the poet in his

slumbers? How is his awakening described? 2. In what spirit does he go out to the live-oaks and the marshes? 3. By what terms does he address the trees and the leaves? What question does the poet ask? 4. What is the poet s petition? 5. What bird emerges from the trees? 6. What is the thought of the stanza addressed to the " reverend marsh"? 7. Give the details of the full tide. 8. Explain the line

"The bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence." 9. How is the motion of the dawn described? 10. In what terms does Lanier describe the first flush of the eastern sky? 1 1. Trace his description of the slow rising of the sun above the horizon. 12. Give the substance of the apos trophe to heat. 13. What is the thought about the worker and his toil? 14. In what spirit does the poet return to the haunts of men after this contact with nature?

JOHN BANISTER TABB

Father T abb s poems are all short, a favorite form being the quatrain. Critics have aptly called them cameos the most delicate art in the smallest compass. Poetry of this sort demands the most refined tech nique, and that of Father Tabb is almost perfect.

MY STAR (PAGE 429)


QUESTIONS, i. What is the thought of the first stanza? 2. What

application is made of it in the second stanza?

KILLDEE (PAGE 430)

Killdee: the killdee, or killdeer, is a bird of the plover family that is named from its cry "Kill-dee, Kill-dee."

QUESTIONS, i. What description is found in the first two stanzas?

2. What reflection does the poet put in the last stanzas?

JOHN HENRY BONER

Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote of Boner as "that gentlest of minstrels who caught his music from the whispering pines."

MOONRISE IN THE PlNES (PAGE 431)

bull bats: a colloquial name for the nighthawk. Heat-lightning: more or less extensive and vivid flashes of lightning without thunder, seen at the close of a warm day.