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Literary Hearthstones of Dixie by La Salle Corbell Pickett
page 56 of 146 (38%)
One of those pines was especially his own, by his love and his choice
of its shade as a resting place. Of it Paul Hayne wrote when his
friend had passed from its shadows for the last time:

The same majestic pine is lifted high
Against the twilight sky,
The same low, melancholy music grieves
Amid the topmost leaves,
As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him
Beneath those shadows dim.

Such dreams we can dimly imagine sometimes when we stand beneath a
glorious pine and try to translate its whisperings into words, and
watch "the last rays of sunset shimmering down, flashed like a royal
crown." Sometimes we catch glimpses of such radiant visions when we
stand in the pine shadows and think, as Hayne did so often after that
beautiful August, "Of one who comes no more." Under that stately tree
he

Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine
Or, hushed in trance divine,
Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far
Of evening's virgin star.

In all his years after, Paul Hayne held in his heart the picture of
his friend with head against that "mighty trunk" when

The unquiet passion died from out his eyes,
As lightning from stilled skies.

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