JOHN CHARLES MCNEILL [1874-1907] EDWARD K. GRAHAM JOHN CHARLES MCNEILL was born in North Carolina, July 26, 1874. He spent his youth on his father's farm in Scotland County, at that time a part of Rockingham County. He received his preliminary training in ill-equipped country schools, and in 1893 went to Wake Forest College. After graduation, in 1898, he spent a year (1899-1900) as substitute professor of English at Mercer University, Macon, Georgia. The following year he began the practice of law at Lumberton, N.C., but his literary inclination was dominant, and he bought a part interest in the local paper. During the less than two years that he spent in legal practice at Lumberton, and later at Laurinburg, he was actively engaged in creative work. Journalism claimed all of his time after 1904, when he accepted a position on the Charlotte Daily Observer. In this paper most of his writings appeared, though he made occasionel contributions to The Century Magazine and other prominent periodicals. In 1905 he was awarded the Patterson Cup for the best literary work done in the State during that year. His best work, exclusive of dialect verse, was published in 1906 under the title 'Songs, Merry and Sad.'* At the time of his death, October 17, 1907, he had completed arrangements for publishing his negro dialect poems. His intimate knowledge of the negro, his warm sympathy with his moods, and his graceful gift of reproducing negro melody, put these dialect poems easily among the best in contemporary American journalism; but it is on 'Songs, Merry and Sad' that his claim to remembrance chiefly rests. Judged by this slender volume, then, McNeill is one of the foremost poets of the South of his day. It is a collection that wins him a permanent place in Southern literary history. He is essentially Southern in the tenderness of his feeling, but he is before all else a poet. The attitudinizing that is loosely called Southern, he is wholly without. He has none of the offended melancholy that, though not characteristic of the best poets of the South, is characteristic of their Stone and Barringer, Charlotte, North Carolina. imitators. No boding owls or humid moods haunt his verse, but there is the calm flute-like note of the wood thrush, of "silver silence," "And cottage crofts where apples bend the bough," luring the tired heart into a comfortable peace. He is of a place very definitely, but he is not provincial. The place is home, and it is his fine gift to be able to revivify it with all of its rich connotations. Hearthstone moods, and the little loves and sorrows are his theme. "The little cares and carols that belong To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres, It is these that he voices, in an adequate verse-medium, in felicitous and always unpretentious diction, and with a sympathy that within its range lacks nothing of nobility. Intuitive sympathy dominates his verse. It is melodious with fulltoned, deeply-breathed sympathy. For the little white bride, the invalid, the baby in its crib, the drudge, the caged bird, the prisoner, the mother, the wife, and for her who is a mother but not a wife, it is the same: the love that understands without the need of formalism or creed. With subjects so saturated with sentiment he appears to have no temptation to indulge in sentimentality. The reserve of deep sincerity holds the balance perfectly true. Spontaneous sympathy, however, everywhere takes the emphasis. He keeps to those simple, fundamental tones and moods that present verse appears to have lost interest in, and that it has always been the peculiar function of poetry best to express. At a time when poetry has lost the appeal of passion, it is peculiarly grateful to come into the warm confidence of emotion always gentle, intimate, and manly, and in its best moments infinitely tender. It is a rare and blessed thing when Great-Heart is given the gift of speech. The love poems exhibit the highest pitch of McNeill's singing quality. Quite frankly with him, love is the one thing worth while. The tender depth of "Love's Fashion," "Now," and "Pardon Time," the graceful spontaneity of "Jane's Birthday," and the passionate abandon of "Oh, Ask Me Not," show his power to portray with subtlety and flexibility strong, sweet passion. Just as his sympathy is spontaneous, and not the result of modern altruism, so his representation of nature is not a part of a 'back to nature' movement. Nature with him is not an acquired taste. Το say it tritely, he is clearly a lover of nature rather than a student of nature. His knowledge has come by absorption rather than by analysis, by association rather than by reflection. He does not patronize nature by an appearance of pride in knowing little facts about her. A primrose by the river's brim remains a yellow primrose in his verse, but he reveals again that a simple primrose may be so much! The mere naming may suggest all of the beauty that is its excuse for being, and revive the swift, elusive joy that quivers "in the bliss Where roses blow." In nature-poetry lack of reflection of course does not mean lack of revelation. To say that the treatment is obvious does not mean that it is not as profound as any. Songs, Merry and Sad' interpret nature by presenting her simple aspects only, but however objectively seen, it is nature seen and felt truly, with eye and ear responsive to each sensitive shade of meaning. "October" and "September" reveal real power to discriminate landscapes, and to receive in fulness and beauty landscape moods. Affectionate observation of nature is apt to lead imperceptibly from obvious things to the most profound. "The mysterious powers themselves that men call God, that move and live and have their will behind the blowing wind, and the rising sap, behind the drifting leaf and the granite hills. "these mysterious powers, in poetry, in the naming of the wind, the sap, the drifting leaf, and the granite hills, move and live and have their wills once more. It is so in this work of McNeill. There is not much deliberately, expressed philosophy. "Hills, wrapped in gray, standing along the west; The star of peace at watch above the crest Oh, holy, holy, holy!" This is the heart of its philosophy. Contemplation of nature shades off into worshipful quiescence rather than rises into ecstasy. Although the poet is not disturbed by the beautiful mystery that he sees about him, he sees the beauty and is conscious of the mystery. It arouses in him no anxious question, excites no fever of curiosity. He is content to sit "Between the tents of hope and sweet In the end love will have its righteous way in peace. "Vision," "L'Envoi," "An Invalid," and "A Christmas Hymn" all express variations on this mood. "When merry milkmaids to their cattle call At evenfall And voices range Loud through the gloom from grange to quiet grange, Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves, To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing. The new still holds the old moon in her arms; Of dew and dusk Still lure her nomad odors from the musk. And, at each day's millennial eclipse, Some old song starts, Made of the music of millennial hearts, Whereto one listens as from long ago That one day's tears And love and life are as a thousand years, And that some simple shepherd, singing of May haply find His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.” This "Folk-Song" expresses something of the mood and function of McNeill's work. It is deeply sympathetic and true, with real sweetness and with inspiration, if not broadly compelling, equally real and true. Conviction of great poetic power we seldom feel in reading it, but the presence of the divine gift of poetry we are always sensible of-the gift to minister adequately through song to some need of the spirit as when a simple heart-song speaks the heart of all mankind. Edward Graham BIBLIOGRAPHY Songs, Merry and Sad. Raleigh, North Carolina, Stone and Barringer Company, 1906. The Biographical History of North Carolina, Vol. VII, the North Carolina Booklet, October, 1905. The Charlotte Daily Observer, October 18, 1907. THE BRIDE The following selections, with the exception of "To Sleep" and "Holding off the Calf," are from 'Songs, Merry and Sad,' 1906, and are used here by permission of the publishers. The little white bride is left alone With him, her lord; the guests have gone; The festal hall is dim. No jesting now, nor answering mirth. Why should there be, O little white bride, Some old love-face that comes again, Does your heart yearn back with last regret And the fairy-haunted wood, That you had not withheld from love, Or is it but a nameless fear, When, looking on him where he stands, Pleading into his eyes? |