political feelings and affiliations in this country. They were not
Tories; on the contrary, from the colonial days down to the Civil War
they showed themselves stoutly democratic. The Haynes were, in a measure,
to South Carolina what the Adamses and Quincys were to Massachusetts. A
chivalrous uncle of the poet, Colonel Arthur P. Hayne, fought in three
wars, and afterwards entered the United States Senate. Another uncle,
Governor Robert Y. Hayne, was a distinguished statesman, who did not fear
to cross swords with Webster in the most famous debate, perhaps, of our
national history. The poet's father was a lieutenant in the United States
navy, and died at sea when his gifted son was still an infant. These
patriotic antecedents were not without influence on the life and writings
of the poet.

In the existing biographical sketches of Hayne we find little or no
mention of his mother. This neglect is undeserved. She was a cultured
woman of good English and Scotch ancestry. It was her hand that had the
chief fashioning of the young poet's mind and heart. She transmitted to
him his poetic temperament; and when his muse began its earliest flights,
she encouraged him with appreciative words and ambitious hopes. Hayne's
poems are full of autobiographic elements; and in one, entitled _To My
Mother_, he says:--

"To thee my earliest verse I brought,
All wreathed in loves and roses,
Some glowing boyish fancy, fraught
With tender May-wind closes;
_Thou_ didst not taunt my fledgling song,
Nor view its flight with scorning:
'The bird,' thou saidst, 'grown fleet and strong,
Might yet outsoar the morning!'"