The Cotton Boll.
Here, stretched at ease beneath
This immemorial pine,
Small sphere;
(By dusky fingers brought this morning here,
And shown with boastful smiles),
I turn thy cloven sheath,
Through which the soft white fibres peer,
That, with their gossamer bands,
Unite, like love the sea-divided lands;
And slowly, thread by thread,
Draw forth the folded strands,
Than which the trembling line,
By whose frail help yon startled spider fled
Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed,
Is scarce more fine;
And as the tangled skein
Unravels in my hands,
Betwixt me and the noonday light,
A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles
The landscape broadens on my sight,
As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell
Like that which in the ocean shell,
With mystic sound,
Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round,
And turns some city lane
Into the restless main,
With all his capes and isles!
Yonder bird
In those blue tracts above the thunder, where
No vapors cloud the stainless air,
And never sound is heard,
Unless at such rare time
When, from the City of the Blest,
Rings down some golden chime,
Sees not from his high place
So vast a cirque of summer space,
As widens round me in one mighty field
Which, rimmed by seas and sands,
Doth hall its earliest daylight in the beams
Of gray Atlantic dawns;
And, broad as realms made up of many lands,
Is lost afar
Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns
Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams
Against the Evening Star!
And lo! to the remotest point of sight,
Although I gaze upon no waste of snows,
The endless field is white;
And the whole landscape glows,
For many a shining league away,
With such accumulated light
As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day!
Nor lack there (for the vision grows,
And the small charm within my hands,
More potent even than the fabled one,
Which oped whatever golden mystery
Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale,—
The curious ointment of the Arabian tale,—
Beyond all mortal sense
Doth stretch my sight’s horizon, and I see
Beneath its simple influence,
As if, with Uriel’s crown,
I stood in some great temple of the Sun,
And looked, as Uriel, down)!
Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green
With all the common gifts of God,
For temperate airs and torrid sheen
Weave Edens of the sod;
Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold
Broad rivers win their devious ways;
A hundred isles in their embraces fold
A hundred luminous bays;
And through yon purple haze
Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud-crowned;
And, save where u their sides the ploughman creeps,
Great trackless forests gird them grandly round,
In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps!
Ye Stars, which though unseen, yet with me gaze
Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth!
Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays
Above it as to light a favorite hearth!
Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the West
See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers!
And, you, ye Winds, that on the ocean’s breast
Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers!
Bear witness with me in my song of praise,
And tell the world that, since the world began,
No fairer land hath fired a poet’s lays,
Or given a home to man!
But these are charms already widely blown!
His be the meed whose pencil’s trace
Hath touched our very swamps with grace,
And round whose tuneful way
All Southern laurels bloom;
The Poet of “The Woodlands,” unto whom
Alike are known
The flute’s low breathing and the trumpet’s tone,
And the soft-west-wind’s sighs!
But who shall utter all the debt,
O, Land, wherein all powers are met
That bind a people’s heart!
The world doth owe thee at this day,
And which it never can repay,
Yet scarcely deigns to own!
Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing
The source wherefrom doth spring
That mighty commerce which, confined
To the mean channels of no selfish mart,
Goes out to every shore
Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships
That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips
In alien lands;
Joins with a delicate web remotest strands;
And, gladdening rich and poor,
Doth gild Parisian domes.
Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes,
And only bounds its blessings by mankind!
In offices like these, thy mission lies,
My Country! and it shall not end
As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend
Its blue above thee; though thy foes be hard
And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard
Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark; make thee great
In white and bloodless state;
And, haply, as the years increase,—
Still working through its humbler reach
With that large Wisdom which the Ages teach,—
Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace!
As men who labor in a mine
Beneath the deep Atlantic bed,—
What time a storm is rolling overhead—
Hear the dull booming of the world of brine
Above them, and a mighty muffled roar
Of winds and waters, yet toll calmly on,
And split the rock, and pile the massive ore,
Or carve a niche, or shape the arched roof;
So I, as calmly, weave my woof
Of song, chanting the days to come,
Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air
Stirs with the bruit of battles; and each dawn
Wakes from its starry silence to the hum
Of many gathering armies. Still,
In that we sometimes hear
Upon the Northern winds the voice of woe
Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know
The end must crown us, and a few brief years
Dry all our tears,
I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will
Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget
That there is much even Victory must regret.
And, therefore, not too long
From the great burthen of our country’s wrong
Delay our just release!
And, if it may be, save
These sacred fields of peace
From stain of patriot or of hostile blood!
Oh! help us, Lord! to roll the crimson flood
Back on its course, and, while our banners wing
Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling
To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave
Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate
The lenient future of his fate
There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays
Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western Seas!
Title:The Cotton Boll.
Author:Henry Timrod
Publication:Charleston Mercury
Published in:Charleston
Date:September 3rd 1861
Keywords:Cotton, Industry, War
Commentary
This chauvinistic pastoral poem was published in the Charleston Mercury in September 1861, written by Henry Timrod who had gained a reputation as the poet laureate of the South.* Timrod served as a journalist for the Charleston Mercury throughout the Civil War years, whilst writing rallying poetry for the Confederate cause. The poem opens with an adoring focus on the cotton boll, the protective case of the cotton plant within which sprouts the fluffy white fibre. The poet, looking over an expansive field of the white crop, sees cotton as the symbol of the unsullied nature of the southern cause: ‘In offices like these, my mission lies, | My Country.’ Timrod exploits the powerful imagery of pure white cotton fields in his cries to protect the South and its pastoral pride, pleading with God to save ‘these sacred fields of peace | From stain or patriot of hostile blood!’ The opening microscopic focus takes an expansive view as the poet posits the central role of cotton in global commerce and prosperity, unravelling the fibrous thread of the cotton boll, which ‘joins with a delicate web remotest strands’ of the earth. This of course includes Europe, where cotton ‘[d]oth gild Parisian domes. Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes’. JC
*De Bellis, Jack, “Timrod, Henry” in American National Biography, (Online: Feb 2000).