God 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 gods
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 title 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 Publishing 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 title 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--attitudes on suicide were once quite different than
now--but as it has been quite some time, and the original title gives
more meaning to the poem, it has been retained.
The Title of the poem [ Now! ] did not have the exclamation point in the
table of Contents. It has been added to match the text. The Title 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 title 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".