“lifting ethereal hands / Against all treacherous demons of the dark!”
Autograph Manuscript, signed (“Paul Hamilton Hayne”), of his Poem “The Unseen Host”.
N.p. [Grovetown, Georgia]: n.d. [1881].
Price: $1,000.00
About the item
1 p., in purple ink on ruled paper, the original copy sent to the printer, with title in editor’s hand and other typesetting marks. 1 vols. 4to. “lifting ethereal hands / Against all treacherous demons of the dark!”. Fine (minor soiling and smudges along right margin, not affecting legibility), in maroon cloth folding case.
Item #247421
Manuscript poem by the American poet Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886) on the assassination of President Garfield. “After the death in 1870 of William Gilmore Simms, an old friend and mentor, Hayne became the chief literary spokesman for the South, an unofficial postwar laureate for the late Confederacy” (ANB). Hayne composed this poem after the attack on President James A. Garfield by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station on 2 July 1881. Originally titled “The President’s (Unseen) Company” with the subtitle “The Prayers of the People will not let the old Soldier die!”, and dedicated to Mrs. Garfield, the poem was re-titled by the editor and published as “The Unseen Host.”
The poem, in three stanzas of six, five, and six verses, reads in part:
"Angels are these, born on the breath of prayer! … / For him through all the land, fervent and sweet, / What prayers oh! Christ, have risen to kiss Thy feet! / No marvel then a Spritiual Concourse stands / Beside his bed, lifting ethereal hands / Against all treacherous demons of the dark!… / With mystic wings they fan his vital spark"
Garfield lingered and succumbed to the assassin’s bullet on 19 Sept 1881.
