SOURCE: “Legends and Lyrics, 1872,” in Paul Hamilton Hayne, Twayne, 1972, pp. 56‐83.

In the following essay, Moore presents an analysis of Legends and Lyrics.

In 1864 Hayne made a selection from his poems, and, in the summer of that year, he put the package on a steamer headed for Liverpool; however, Hayne's book presumably failed to arrive in England.¹ After the war he continued to plan to bring out a new collection of his verse. In answer to a query about his “Literary projects” from his old friend John Esten Cooke, the Virginia romancer, Hayne wrote on July 24, 1866, that he had a “goodly pile of MSS. (with one long poem to head them), which (God willing), I trust to publish—whenever the chance occurs. A somewhat indefinite hope,” he added, “but still—a hope!” (Letters, 90).

Less than a year later, as he informed Thompson on March 17, 1867, he hoped “to publish two...