Southern women, by the whole dreamy delicious mystic atmosphere of the Southland.
Only three themes did Poe touch in his poetry,—Love, Beauty, Death. He felt that this was all that poetry could do. We are glad that other poets have struck other notes. We are glad for a greater diapason, for the strong notes of Life, and Faith and Work. We are glad for Chivalry and Heroism and Achievement that stir the poetry in some mighty souls. We rejoice that other equally true poets, like Tennyson and Browning in England, and Emerson and Lowell and Lanier in America, while loving beauty with their whole soul, love it, as it seems to me, with a sturdier faith and a more whole some cheeriness.
Yet it would be ungracious to find fault with what Poe was not. We can only be grateful for the golden treasuries which he has given us as his heritage to us and to the world. Literature would be forever the poorer to deprive it of these exquisite pearls of the passion of genius. His sad life we may remember in pity; much of his work may be forgotten; but the few perfect poems that his spirit wrought out are among the imperishable treasures of mankind.
Friends, the Southern people and especially we of Baltimore must erect to the honor of the genius of Poe a noble and worthy monument in this city—a monument, perchance not so large, but as exquisite in its way as the Scott monument in Edinburgh. The Southern people must build it. For Poe's genius is the exquisite flower of the South, as well as a marvelous creation of our whole wonderful American life. The Southern people must
