Southern Literature From 1579-1895 / A comprehensive review, with copious extracts and criticisms / for the use of schools and the general reader

EDWARD COATE PINKNEY.

1802=1828.

Edward Coate[13] Pinkney was the son of the distinguished orator and statesman, William Pinkney, of Maryland, and was born in London while his father was minister to England. After attending the College of Baltimore, he entered the Navy at fourteen years of age and spent much of his time of service in the Mediterranean. On his father’s death, 1822, he returned to Baltimore and engaged in the practice of law, at the same time making some reputation by his poems. “A Health” and “Picture Song” are considered his best—their beauty makes us mourn his early death. At the time he was numbered one of the “five greatest poets of the country.” On his return from a journey to Mexico, taken for his health, he was elected, in 1826, professor of Belles-lettres in the University of Maryland, formerly called the College of Baltimore.

WORKS.

Poems: Rodolph, a Fragment, and other Poems.

A HEALTH.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone;
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music’s own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,—
The idol of past years.

Of her bright face, one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain;
But memory such as mine of her
So very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh
Will not be life’s, but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon—
Her health! and would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.

SONG.

We break the glass, whose sacred wine,
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,
Should e’er the hallowed toy profane:
And thus I broke a heart that poured
Its tide of feelings out for thee,
In draughts, by after times deplored,
Yet dear to memory.

But still the old empassioned ways
And habits of my mind remain,
And still unhappy light displays
Thine image chambered in my brain;
And still it looks as when the hours
Went by like flights of living birds,
Or that soft chain of spoken flowers
And airy gems, thy words.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] Mr. Charles Weathers Bump, Ph. D. (Johns-Hopkins), says this name should be Coote, as it so stands in the register of Pinkney’s baptism, which he has seen.

Tulane University, New Orleans, La.

Limited space permits us to give view of only one of the buildings of this great institution.

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