Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
considerable body of such poetry-if so it may be dignified-was done by
persons who had spent at least several years of their lives in the Chesapeake
region and may have composed some of their lines there. News-ballad
and dedicatory and commendatory verse was popular in England at the
time, and the only possible quality which is American in the poems noticed
is subject matter. No occasional verses by poets resident in other southern
colonies than Virginia seem to have survived at all from the first century,
but surely, from the extant clues, it is evident that much more was written
throughout the century than is now known. In the next period occasional
verses appear in every one of the southern provinces, and frequently. They
were by then a natural and familiar form of expression for any poet or
poetaster.
THE RELIGIOUS, MEDITATIVE, AND MORAL POEM
The religious or meditative or moral poem written by southern colonists
is not frequent in the seventeenth century, but there are several interesting
examples. Two of the principal writers of early Jamestown, known best for
their prose, wrote thoughtful verses, in effective forms, which are usually
considered among their ablest expressions.
Captain John Smith's two commendatory poems just noticed are significant
partly because they seem to show him capable of the better poem
which appears without signature among the preliminaries of one of his
later works. Students of the man and the period feel that it is surely his.
This powerful poem appears immediately after the dedication and address
to the reader in his last work, Advertisements for the unexperienced Planters
of New-England, or any where. Or, The Path-way to experience to erect
a Plantation (1631 ) . It appears in a volume which, despite its title, is devoted
to bringing Smith's readers up to date on Virginia and recommending
its form of Christianity in preference to that of the Pilgrims and Puritans.
The poem itself despite the universality of its theme, seems intensely
personal.
The Sea Marke
Aloofe, aloofe; and come no near;
the dangers do appear;
Which if my ruine had not been
you had not seen:
I only lie upon this shelf
to be a mark to all
which in the same might fall.
That none may perish but myself.
1337