Hayne lacked the fierce energy of a great reformer or partisan leader.
But nowhere else do we find a heart more sensitive to grandeur of
achievement or pathos of incident. He recognized the unsurpassed heroism
of sentiment and achievement displayed in the war; and in an admirable
sonnet, he exclaims:--

"Ah, foolish souls and false! who loudly cried
'True chivalry no longer breathes in time.'
Look round us now; how wondrous, how sublime
The heroic lives we witness; far and wide
Stern vows by sterner deeds are justified;
Self-abnegation, calmness, courage, power,
Sway, with a rule august, our stormy hour,
Wherein the loftiest hearts have wrought and died--
Wrought grandly, and died smiling. Thus, O God,
From tears, and blood, and anguish, thou hast brought
The ennobling act, the faith-sustaining thought--
Till, in the marvelous present, one may see
A mighty stage, by knights and patriots trod,
Who had not shunned earth's haughtiest chivalry."

The war brought the poet disaster. His beautiful home and the library he
has celebrated in a noble sonnet were destroyed in the bombardment of
Charleston. The family silver, which had been stored in Columbia for
safe-keeping, was lost in Sherman's famous "march to the sea." His native
state was in desolation; his friends, warm and true with the fidelity
which a common disaster brings, were generally as destitute and helpless
as himself. Under these disheartening circumstances, rendered still more
gloomy by the ruthless deeds of reconstruction, he withdrew to the pine
barrens of Georgia, where, eighteen miles from Augusta, he built a very